Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain 9780300151695

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. The Duel and the Rhetoric of Honor
3. Honor and the Law
4. Men
5. Women
6. Adultery and Violence
7. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

HONOR AND VIOLENCE IN GOLDEN AGE SPAIN

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scott k. taylor

Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain

yale university press

new haven & london

Copyright ∫ 2008 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Set in Scala with Scala Sans type by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taylor, Scott K., 1969– Honor and violence in Golden Age Spain / Scott K. Taylor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-300-12685-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Dueling—Spain—History. 2. Criminal law—Spain—History. 3. Reputation (Law)—Spain—History. 4. Honor—Spain—History. I. Title. kkt4092.t39 2008 345.46%0256—dc22

2008008391

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). It contains 30 percent postconsumer waste (PCW) and is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). 10

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For Amy

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contents

Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction 1 2 The Duel and the Rhetoric of Honor 17 3 Honor and the Law 65 4 Men 100 5 Women 157 6 Adultery and Violence 194 7 Conclusion 226 Notes 233 Bibliography 281 Index 297

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acknowledgments

Writing is often said to be a lonely, solitary task, but while working on this project I have been constantly surprised by the generosity and companionship I have found along the way. Beginning in graduate school in Charlottesville, I was fortunate to find a cadre of fellow students who made things bearable and even, dare I say, pleasant, including Allyson Creasman, Dave D’Andrea, Taylor Fain, Tom Flemma, Lou Hamilton, Mitch Hammond, J. B. Mayo, Andy Morris, Steve and Melissa Norris, Will Roth, Richard Samuelson, Andy Trees, and Lara Diefenderfer Wul√. Their friendships have continued to make academic life bearable, and their advice, sometimes from specialties far removed from early modern Spain, has been enriching. My friends and I at the University of Virginia realized at the time how fortunate we were to be there in the mid-1990s, when the history department had a wealth of inspiring teachers in early modern and medieval European history. As the years go on and I realize how much their lessons have remained with me, I am astonished at how lucky I was to be there just when the collection of scholars reached its height. H. C. Erik Midelfort, Thomas Noble, Duane Osheim, Anne Schutte, and, from the Spanish department, Alison Weber are truly models of how to teach graduate students: by balancing excruciating rigor with encouraging warmth. Merely thanking these men and women here seems a laughably small

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measure of gratitude compared to how important they were in shaping me into a professional historian. The advice of Sara Nalle was crucial in getting this project started o√ right. The example, dedication, and friendship of my dissertation adviser, Carlos Eire, even after he left Virginia, has been a lasting blessing. A Fulbright Fellowship made possible the research in Spain necessary for this book. Just as important was the welcome given by my fellow Fulbrighters. Brian Bunk, Javier Morillo-Alicea, Kathy Camp, and Grace Coolidge immediately made me feel welcome in Madrid. Zina Deretsky, Stephanie Fink Debacker, and Branka Jikich helped maintain a sense of community as the year went on. The sta√ of the Archivo Municipal de Toledo—especially Tere and Javi—was indispensable, taking care of my innumerable requests for months on end. Turning my dissertation into a book opened a new set of relationships. Siena College has been very supportive, providing funds to return to Spain and an extremely helpful library sta√. Pam Clements, Kate Forhan, Margaret Hannay, and Mary Meany brought me to Siena and provided a community of friends and scholars right from the start. My colleagues in the history department, especially Karen Mahar, have created a collegial and fun atmosphere for teaching and writing. More recently, Dan and Keaghan Turner arrived and made life in Albany even better. Colleagues outside Siena have been crucial as well. Discussing this project with Renato Barahona, Ed Behrend-Martínez, Ruth MacKay, and Keith Wrightson has helped immensely. Barbara Rosenwein graciously allowed me to read some of her unpublished work. Even before the dissertation was begun, Jodi Bilinko√ took pains to smoothen my entry into the academic world. Helen Nader has swooped into my professional life from time to time to bestow an encouraging comment and sometimes much more. Special thanks go out to those who have read all or parts of this book. Robert Ingram, apart from being a very good friend since the first days of graduate school, has been my introduction and thesis mentor. Allyson Poska helped me rethink a journal article that became a chapter. Tom Cohen has been an early critic and advocate of my work. Jim Amelang has become a godfather to this project, from his first meetings with me when I arrived in Madrid with scarcely a clue as to where to look for archival sources until this past summer, when he gave me his most recent advice.

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Jim has been as important as my dissertation adviser in getting this work accomplished. The editors and anonymous reviewers at the Sixteenth Century Journal and the Journal of Early Modern History have been invaluable. I am grateful to the Sixteenth Century Journal for publishing a version of chapter 5 as ‘‘Women, Honor, and Violence in a Castilian Town, 1600– 1650,’’ Sixteenth Century Journal 35 (2004): 1081–99. Thanks, too, to the Journal of Early Modern History for publishing part of this book as ‘‘Credit, Debt, and Honor in Castile, 1600–1650,’’ Journal of Early Modern History 7, no. 1 (May 2003): 8–27. Everyone associated with Yale University Press has been outstanding, beginning with the anonymous reviewers who went far beyond the call of duty to help make this a better book. Jessie Hunnicutt has saved me from myself an embarrassing number of times, and Chris Rogers and Laura Davulis have also been very supportive. I am sorry I was not always able to take everyone’s advice, and of course any errors are wholly my own responsibility. None of this would have been possible without my family. My parents, Susan Taylor and Jennifer Langfield, and Gary Taylor and Beverly Monnens, and my sister and brother-in-law, Kimberly and Tony Johnson, have provided the financial and, most important, emotional support necessary for someone to make it into his thirties before having a real job. Joyce and Darwin Murrell have gone beyond the duties of parents-in-law, even to the extent of proofreading the manuscript. My daughters, Katie and Alexandra, have given me the best reason to hurry up and finish—I apologize for the time this book took away from them, and also for having the wrong answer to Katie’s question, ‘‘Is it a kid’s book?’’ Finally, my wife, Amy Murrell Taylor, has been there from the beginning and has made it all possible. She has done everything: taking time away from her own career, forgoing time with me, providing me with a loving and supportive family, and even reading the entire manuscript. I dedicate this book to her, since anything good in it—as in my life as a whole—is thanks to her.

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chapter 1

Introduction

You are in danger, honor . . . there is not an hour for you which is not critical; in your tomb you live: since woman gives you breath in her you are treading always in your grave.∞ these musings form part of a soliloquy by Don Gutierre Alfonso Solís in The Physician of His Honor (El médico de su honra), written by Pedro Calderón de la Barca around 1635. Gutierre finds himself tormented by suspicions that his wife, Doña Mencía de Acuña, is conducting an a√air with Prince Enrique, the king’s brother, who previously had courted Mencía before she married Gutierre. Gutierre utters these words after discovering a dagger in his house with a design matching Prince Enrique’s sword. Gutierre suspects, correctly, that Enrique has been courting Mencía again and forgot the dagger while making a clandestine visit to their house. Gutierre further suspects, wrongly, that Mencía has acquiesced to Enrique’s advances and is having sex with the prince. Unable to avenge himself against a prince, Gutierre instead concocts a scheme that will simultaneously avenge his dishonor and keep the disgraceful a√air a secret. He coerces a surgeon to bleed Mencía to death, then disguises the homicide as

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a terrible medical accident: Mencía was unwell, a surgeon bled her, and afterward her bandages loosened and she died. Ironically, after the murder, King Pedro pieces together the truth with the surgeon’s help and punishes Gutierre by ordering him to marry Doña Leonor, a woman whom Gutierre had courted before he married Mencía but cast aside on suspicions of infidelity. With this new wife whom he does not trust, Gutierre will relive the torment of suspicion and jealousy all over again.≤ Gutierre’s gruesome behavior, and the dilemma that prompted it, has exercised a hold on the viewers and readers of The Physician of His Honor for centuries, representing a code of honor, su√used with sex and violence, that has both fascinated and repelled. The Physician of His Honor was not alone in portraying the bloody demands of honor: the stage of Spain’s ‘‘Golden Age’’ featured an entire genre of plays whose plot focused on a protagonist trying to protect or avenge his honor, the honor plays, spearheaded by Calderón and Lope Félix de Vega Carpio (known as Lope de Vega). The Physician of His Honor also falls into a smaller, even more gripping subset within the honor plays: the wife-murder plays. These dramas all feature a husband who feels compelled by honor to kill his wife. The theme first came to prominence in Lope de Vega’s Punishment without Vengeance (El castigo sin venganza), written in 1631, and Calderón wrote two other wife-murder plays in addition to The Physician of His Honor: Secret Insult, Secret Vengeance (A secreto agravio, secreta venganza), also written around 1635, and The Painter of His Dishonor (El pintor de su deshonra), written in the 1640s. For more than one hundred years, critics seized on the honor plays, and specifically the wife-murder plays, as especially telling products of Castilian culture whose themes helped to mark Spain as a uniquely violent, honor-obsessed country quite di√erent from the rest of early modern Europe.≥ While the plots and themes of the honor plays varied, they shared three salient features. First, as Gutierre complains, the honor of men was dependent on the behavior of the women in their lives: their daughters, sisters, and especially wives. Second, the honor of women, and therefore men, depended entirely on sexual behavior. The faintest suspicion of sexual infidelity, or the bad behavior of another man toward a woman, threatened her honor. Men had to control the sexuality of their wives and women kin in order to preserve their own male honor, so adultery was the most serious threat to both male and female honor. Third, the only appro-

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priate response to dishonorable behavior was violence. Men could protect or restore their honor only through murderous revenge. The wife-murder plays took this logic to its appalling conclusion, with the husbands deciding to kill not only the men who stole their wives’ honor but their own wives as well. Literary critics and historians have long struggled to explain the prominence of honor in Golden Age culture. A central question has been whether the honor code was based on chivalric values of the medieval aristocracy that gradually spread to the rest of society, or whether the honor code existed in the plays as an elaborate mask for other social matters, such as limpieza de sangre, or ‘‘purity of blood.’’∂ Those who have argued that Spanish honor derived from the nobility point to the long struggle during the Middle Ages as the Christians in the north of Spain strove to ‘‘reconquer’’ the south from the Muslims who had first occupied the peninsula in 711. The disproportionate importance that the military aristocracy gained during the centuries of warfare gave chivalry an even greater prominence in Spain than in the rest of Europe, and it eventually crept down the class system until, by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, everyone could relate to the themes of the honor plays.∑ Others have suspected that, as the Reconquest wound down in the late Middle Ages, the seemingly straightforward honor of knights and their ladies took a di√erent turn.∏ By far the most common belief is that honor was truly a way of coping with the overwhelming importance to Spanish society of purity of blood. As the Christians gained control over all of Spain during the Middle Ages, the more or less tolerant attitudes that had prevailed toward Jews and Muslims during the centuries of Islamic ascendancy disappeared. Jewish heritage in particular troubled Christian Spaniards as conversos, or converts from Judaism and their descendants, entered Christian society beginning with a series of forced conversions in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Prior to conversion, these Jews had been restricted from the pinnacles of status and power no matter how wealthy some of them had been, but now, as Christians, they were eligible to marry into the ranks of the nobility, even as many ‘‘Old Christians’’ suspected that the ‘‘New Christians’’ were secretly holding on to their old Jewish religion. Eventually these tensions led to the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and the idea that Jews were a separate people and could never truly

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convert to Christianity because of the impurity of their blood. Meanwhile, according to this line of thought, honor came to hinge not on chivalry or virtues but on the possession of a ‘‘pure,’’ non-Jewish lineage. Thus, according to influential critics such as Melveena McKendrick, the honor plays represented the idea that outward appearances had come to trump morality in Golden Age Castile: Don Gutierre was driven to kill Mencía, despite her innocence, by the mere appearance of impropriety and the barbarous opinion of his peers that only violence could wash away his disgrace.π Men’s honor depended on women’s behavior because a wife could introduce another man’s blood into her husband’s lineage, betraying him through adultery. Therefore, honor plays dramatized anxieties about Jewish blood entering Old Christian families.∫ Since limpieza de sangre was a concern unique to Spain, anxiety over honor became more heightened in Spanish culture and society than elsewhere in Europe. Regardless of which side one takes in this debate, almost all historians agree that honor was central to Spanish culture, and that honor was a code that everyone carried in the forefront of their minds and that guided their behavior. As the historian Bartolomé Bennassar put it, ‘‘If there was one passion capable of defining the conduct of the Spanish people, it was the passion of honor.’’Ω But it is not just the honor plays, and the critics and historians who study them, that have encouraged the belief in honor as a unique and defining element of Spanish culture. The anthropology of the Mediterranean has also lent force to this idea. Beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, the emergence of the Mediterranean basin as a subspecialty in anthropology grew hand in hand with an increasing emphasis on honor and shame as the value system that united the lands north and south of the Mediterranean Sea into one coherent area. By the 1970s, anthropologists such as Julian Pitt-Rivers, J. G. Peristiany, and Jane Schneider had identified two overarching traits that defined the Mediterranean and di√erentiated it from northern Europe: the first was an underdeveloped political economy, and the second was an emphasis on a familycentered morality that tore apart any larger sense of community. The honor code undergirded this moral system, and it placed highly di√erent demands on the behavior of men and women, with a special emphasis on female sexual purity, family loyalty, and the physical segregation of men and women. The tendency has been to use the second trait to explain the

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first: the focus on family, sex, revenge, and feuding has helped prevent Mediterranean cultures from coalescing into modern, industrialized, and politically and socially mature societies like those in northern Europe. Honor helped lock Mediterranean residents in a pattern of class and political structures that kept them ‘‘backward.’’ So as the anthropology of the Mediterranean flourished, the idea of an honor code, centered on sexual purity, formed one of the field’s most coherent focal points—it is what made the Mediterranean area ‘‘Mediterranean.’’∞≠ Furthermore, anthropologists assumed that the twentieth-century manifestation of the honor code was a relic of premodern society, which enabled historians to assume that honor and shame were central to the culture of early modern Spain—without much thought given to how accurately the twentieth century can illuminate the seventeenth.∞∞ In short, the study of sexuality, sex roles, conduct, and identity in early modern Spain takes the honor code, illustrated by the honor plays and theorized by anthropologists, as a starting point.∞≤ It is not just modern scholars who view honor as important—honor gripped the imagination of early modern Castilians themselves, reaching a peak in the early seventeenth century. The honor plays emerged during this period, and other literature, ranging from the dueling and fencing manuals that attained their widest reach around 1600 to court documents such as a memorandum written in 1638 by the chief minister of Spain, the Count-Duke of Olivares, contemplating the best way to stop duels among noblemen at court, confirms that honor and violence were in the forefront of Castilian minds.∞≥ Anxiety about honor coincided with Spain’s era of great literary output known as the Golden Age, lasting roughly from 1500 to 1650. Drama was not the only genre a√ected. Confessor’s manuals, which focused on how to lead a virtuous Christian life, and other conduct books that gave advice on correct behavior to di√erent categories of people such as gentlemen, married women, and adolescent girls addressed honor and shame as part of their moralizing projects. The Golden Age also saw the flowering of Castilian jurisprudence, and lawmakers and commentators squarely addressed the legal approaches to violence, honor, and the duel. Castilians themselves saw honor as central to their culture, for better or for worse. But what if our understanding of the honor code is mistaken? Since the 1980s the pillars that upheld our view of honor in Spain have begun to

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crumble. For example, anthropologists have reconsidered their own tradition of Mediterranean studies. Previous work had naively exoticized both Muslims and southern Europeans, presenting them as premodern and without history or agency. A new generation of anthropologists also asserts that the earlier focus on sexual behavior, supposedly the key to honor and shame in the Mediterranean, may say more about the anxieties of anthropologists than it does about their subjects.∞∂ In addition, revisionist studies of the Spanish stage reveal that while the honor plays of Lope and Calderón loom large in the landscape of Golden Age literature today, they constituted only a small, unrepresentative fraction of the output of the two playwrights and, when first staged, vanished quickly from the scene. To put things further in perspective, while Lope and Calderón are now seen as the preeminent Golden Age dramatists, they were only two among many successful writers, most of whom are now forgotten but whose own plots and themes would have resonated in the minds of Golden Age audiences. Honor plays as a genre did not gain their place in the canon of Spanish literature until scholars seized on them during the nineteenth century.∞∑ Moreover, modern critics have discovered that the importance of wife murder in a few Golden Age plays came about not because honor held a unique place in Spanish culture but rather because of the internal developments of the Spanish stage—wife murder was a good way to sew together a number of other themes that had become popular at the time, like the woman in a bad marriage, the immoral woman who needs to be punished, or the insolvable marital conflict that tragically ends in violence.∞∏ Set in this context, the honor plays do not make such a definitive statement about early modern Spanish culture. As to the Golden Age writers of moralist tracts and anti-dueling manuals, we of course cannot say that they were ‘‘wrong’’ about their own culture. But we can make a di√erent observation—that such works provide models of how their authors believed honor was meant to work in early modern society. Whether attacking or praising the honor code, each work represents how someone imagined honor in an idealized form. By taking pen to paper, writers grasped for a simplifying system to explain human behavior, and they found one—or created one—in the honor code. In doing so, they took something—lived experience—that was fleeting and ambiguous, contingent on choice, and condensed it into something intel-

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ligible and fixed, pouring the values they hoped to encourage into these models. These authors represented elite culture: ‘‘elite’’ not in the sense that they lived entirely di√erently than most Spaniards but in the sense that writing, leading as it often does to abstraction, promotes a di√erent understanding of behavior and motivation than what animates most people—especially non-elite, premodern people—in everyday situations. For all their insightful observation of their own culture, these writers may not have been able to explain fully how honor truly worked, even though each one supposed, or at least hoped, that the model he o√ered for inspection was a mirror of real behavior. In terms of the limitations of attempting to describe in writing the behavior and thought of an entire society, contemporary authors were no di√erent from modern anthropologists and literary critics hoping to find a simple key to understanding Spain. We can use contemporary printed sources to help us understand the thinking of early modern Castilians, but we should be wary of assuming that written models of honor were exact replicas of experience.∞π Thus the sca√olding that presented a uniquely honor-besotted Spain, more Mediterranean than European in its concern for male control over female sexuality, seems to have collapsed. Yet surely honor must have held some importance in Golden Age Castile—surely the contemporary commentators, at least, could not have been so misguided about their own world? Fortunately, in the search for insights into the actual workings of honor in early modern Spain, there remains one more source to be exploited: criminal court cases. These cases record the statements of the participants in, and witnesses to, violent confrontations as they tried to explain to the authorities what happened. Participants attempted to justify their actions, and witnesses imposed their own sense of order on what they had observed. When the words and deeds of real people are compared to the abstracted contemporary models of honor, the results are bracing. Indeed, they force us to reconsider not only honor and its role in Castilian society but also Spain’s place in the cultural geography of Europe and the Mediterranean. Honor was not a trap that forced early modern Spaniards to act in certain tragic and bloodthirsty ways. Instead it was a tool, used equally by men and women to manage relations with their neighbors and maintain their place in the community. While honor has long been thought to be crucial to Spain’s unique character, research in

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other parts of Europe reveal a system of honor and violence similar to that in Castile. Spain might have been part of a broader Mediterranean civilization, but it was also fully European. Another way that criminal records are useful is that they provide access to the experience of non-elite Spaniards—men and women who in some cases may have been literate but had no time to set down thoughts and memories to paper, and who therefore are hard for historians to study. While elite, literate commentators, especially the authors of dueling manuals, would have laughed at the idea, judging by the behavior recorded in the criminal records the non-elite indeed had a sense of honor and fought duels. Confrontations among the townspeople and peasants of Castile were not just a series of chaotic brawls. Evidence from the criminal records reveals clear patterns in their disputes. The rituals and logic of popular violence closely paralleled the structure of the formal duel as practiced by noblemen. Both were rituals by which Castilians disputed honor, through a√ronts against reputation and struggles over whether the insults were accurate. Contrary to the nature of elite duels, however, and unlike our traditional understanding of the honor code, violent conflict among the non-elite was flexible and followed no fixed course of action. The peasants and artisans were in control of their disputes, not trapped in an inflexible code of honor and vengeance. Furthermore, and once again contrary to the way honor was depicted in the honor plays, disputes did not end once the judicial authorities stepped in. The criminal justice system was open to manipulation at the hands of disputants and witnesses, and the decisions the authorities reached served largely to ratify and confirm the wishes of the community. Calling honor a code suggests that it determined how Castilians were supposed to act and that they had little choice in the matter—either follow the code or lose one’s status irrevocably. But the theme that emerges from the criminal records most clearly is choice. Castilians could choose to invoke the language and gestures of honor—or not. Once begun, they had a wide array of options for pursuing confrontations over honor, ranging from deadly violence to reconciliation. Invoking honor was just one of many possible strategies that Castilians might use when pursuing disputes against their neighbors. Both men and women had these options available to them—women did not depend solely on men to defend their reputations. The language of a√ront and honor and the rituals of the duel

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were very common in the conflicts that arose, even conflicts over everyday, mundane issues, and they seemed to constitute a repertoire of moves that most people understood most of the time. For these reasons, it is better to refer to honor not as a code but as a rhetoric: the rhetoric of honor.∞∫ Because honor and violence were so closely linked, the patterns of violent confrontations provide insights into the social concerns of nonelite Castilians, especially those involving gender. Honor, as articulated and fought over in early modern Castile, encompassed a range of concerns that included the values described in the honor plays and in modern anthropology but also went significantly beyond them. Notably, the public reputation of men and women in the seventeenth century consisted of much more than sexuality. For men, defending the sexual reputation of their women kin was important, but male honor also included much else, including competence in one’s trade or o≈ce, the management of one’s credit and debt relationships, and one’s performance in the aggressive, competitive play that composed much of male sociability. For women, sexual purity was an important part of honor, but sexuality was not the single determinant of female reputation. Like men, women took steps to protect other family members, even their husbands—sometimes resorting to slander and violence in their defense. Also like men, women had their own credit and debt relationships to maintain. Just as important, women were by no means solely dependent on men to defend their reputations. Set in this context, the invoking of honor when addressing adultery no longer seems fraught with the heavy significance that the honor plays invested in it—indeed, Castilians might invoke honor whenever interpersonal problems arose. Two collections of criminal court cases that have survived since the early seventeenth century can help us understand the role of honor in Castilians’ lives. The first is from a local court of first instance covering cases from Yébenes, a town in central Castile. Few records of local criminal courts in Castile survive from the early modern period, but one notable exception is the archive of the fiel del juzgado, a judge based in Toledo who had jurisdiction over the Montes de Toledo, a rugged, sparsely populated area governed by the council of the city of Toledo. The largest town in the Montes, Yébenes also boasts the most case records from the region surviving from the early modern period. The period 1600 to 1650 was a time when honor and violence most su√used the elite written culture of

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plays, dueling manuals, and other literature. Thankfully, these years also provide the longest run of extant criminal records for Yébenes. The information from Yébenes allows for a close look at the behavior of ordinary, non-elite men and women who all resided in the same community. Although Yébenes cannot be said to represent a ‘‘typical’’ Castilian town, neither was it unusual.∞Ω It was located about twenty-five miles south of Toledo on the main road that connected Toledo and Madrid with Córdoba and the rest of Andalusia, called the Calle Real where it passed through town. In addition to serving as the main artery of the town, the Calle Real split Yébenes into two jurisdictions, ‘‘Yébenes de Toledo’’ to the west, lying in the Montes de Toledo, and ‘‘Yébenes de la Orden’’ or ‘‘Yébenes de San Juan’’ to the east, governed by the Order of the Hospital of San Juan de Jerusalem, a crusading order founded in the Middle Ages. The Order held jurisdiction over much of the land to the east of the Montes de Toledo, and the Grand Prior of the Order in Castile used the nearby town of Consuegra as his administrative seat. The Grand Prior administered justice and appointed o≈cials for Yébenes de San Juan.≤≠ Only cases arising from disputes on the west side of the Calle Real—the side falling in the Montes de Toledo—or disputes involving residents of Yébenes de Toledo (even if they occurred on the other side of the road) would fall under the jurisdiction of the city of Toledo, so the records of the fiel del juzgado, now in the municipal archive of Toledo, do not represent the entirety of criminal cases arising from the community of Yébenes. At first Yébenes de Toledo was the larger of the two neighborhoods, rising from a population of about 2,300 in 1561 to 3,850 in 1590 before falling again to about 2,400 by 1663. Meanwhile Yébenes de San Juan rose from roughly 1,260 in 1561 to 1,960 in 1590, then rose to perhaps 3,200 by 1663. Yébenes de Toledo held roughly two-fifths to two-thirds of the total population of the combined neighborhoods during the period 1600 to 1650.≤∞ The Montes de Toledo was an area stretching from Yébenes, on its eastern border, about thirty-five miles to the west and spanning about twenty-five miles from north to south. Its existence as a discrete jurisdiction dated back to 1246, when the king sold the Montes, along with all his rights to exercise lordship, including legal oversight, to the municipality of Toledo.≤≤ Located between the Tajo and Guadiana river basins, the region earned its name from the spiny ridges and rugged valleys that

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form its topography. Situated far from the coast or important markets and in one of the least inviting agricultural regions of the Iberian peninsula, the Montes was among the last areas to be settled in periods of demographic and economic expansion and one of the first to see depopulation in periods of decline. While the Montes as a whole was largely given over to livestock (estimates give figures of between 14,000 and 45,000 sheep and goats in the area around Yébenes), most of the land close by Yébenes was agricultural. Wheat and barley were the two primary crops grown, but vineyards and olive groves spread across the landscape too, as well as irrigated vegetable gardens and fruit orchards close to the urban nucleus of the town. Oak, rosemary, and juniper trees were plentiful in the wastes and hills, and charcoal manufacturing was, after herding and farming, the third important extractive activity of the area.≤≥ The town of Yébenes was nestled just to the south of a high ridge that separated the Montes from the town of Orgaz to the north, and Yébenes de Toledo and Yébenes de San Juan merged during the nineteenth century into Los Yébenes. Because of the relatively large size of the town, in addition to its location on one of Spain’s major arteries, there was an urban component to Yébenes. Land ownership was concentrated in the hands of the city of Toledo, various church institutions such as chaplaincies and confraternities, and a few local elite families who claimed hidalgo status, a kind of petty nobility.≤∂ These families had extensive land holdings and large flocks of sheep and goats, and they also owned mills and olive presses. Yébenes de Toledo also supported almost twenty clergy in the early seventeenth century (plus another half dozen or so in Yébenes de San Juan), including a few who had earned a university degree and thereby claimed the right to be addressed as Licenciado, or Licentiate (abbreviated herein as ‘‘Lic.’’). Below these two groups on the social scale were prosperous peasant families; a few professionals such as physicians, surgeons, pharmacists, and schoolteachers; and some merchants. There were also artisans —weavers, tailors, shoemakers (who perhaps serviced travelers on the Calle Real), blacksmiths, bakers, millers, and other craftsmen who tended to residents’ daily needs—and a few people who ran inns and taverns that served travelers passing through. Below these categories were smallholding peasants, called labradores, who owned some land but usually not enough to support a family, and who therefore had to seek outside income. There was an even larger class of families who owned no land

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whatsoever. Many of these landless people were poor, working as day laborers for the great landowners. At the bottom of the social scale were servants and even a handful of slaves. The wealthiest 10 percent of the population owned around half the arable land and half the livestock, and these same families also dominated the municipal o≈ces that provided the local government for Yébenes de Toledo.≤∑ With two masters, the city of Toledo and the Order of San Juan, exercising lordship, a sharp legal division existed between the two neighborhoods. The two halves remained distinct in other ways, too, while in some ways they seemed to coalesce into a single community. They had separate parishes and separate town halls. Family ties crossed the Calle Real, however, and charitable institutions that fed the hungry took no notice of the jurisdictional boundaries. In times of epidemic, such as 1598 and 1647, o≈cials of the two jurisdictions worked together to stop the spread of disease. They made appeals jointly to the royal government, too, as when they petitioned to avoid having troops billeted in the town. The royal government also treated them as a single unit for tax purposes. The two neighborhoods celebrated some religious festivals together, such as the holy days of San Blas, Santa Quiteria, San Juan Evangelista, Corpus Christi, and Asunción. Bullfights were often hosted jointly, as were important visitors such as the Archbishop of Toledo or distinguished noblemen who came to hunt. The physical look and feel of the neighborhoods were identical, with houses built of brick, stone, and wood. The residents clustered their houses and corrals for livestock tightly around the Calle Real, leaving as much space as possible for agriculture outside the inhabited areas. Thus, while the population was not very large, both neighborhoods felt crowded, with few open spaces besides a central plaza, the Calle Real, and the two churchyard cemeteries. Only a few wealthy families were able to enjoy some private space that provided comfort by living in two-story buildings built around courtyards.≤∏ Historians have sometimes described the Montes de Toledo as a backward area not well connected to the rest of Castile, but this was not really the case.≤π The pattern of demographic and economic growth in the sixteenth century and decline in the seventeenth century mirrors the pattern for Castile as a whole, although these trends manifested themselves more acutely in the Montes than elsewhere. The highway that divided Yébenes in two also linked the town with the rest of society, bringing in the trav-

introduction

13

elers who helped support the local economy. Perhaps it was this road, too, that encouraged outsiders to settle in Yébenes, among them some Portuguese and, until their expulsion in 1610, Morisco families. (The Moriscos were Christians who converted from Islam and their descendants, who, like the conversos, were suspected of being clandestine adherents to their old faith.) Institutional connections to the city of Toledo also maintained a link between Yébenes and the outside world. The city owned much of the pasture and woodlands in the Montes and rented the rights to these lands out to Montes residents and to rich residents of Toledo for a fee. Since technically they were vassals of the city, villages in the Montes also owed Toledo an annual tax called the docavo, which was supposed to be one-twelfth of all the goods produced during the year. This tax was unusually high for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by which time most seigneurs were collecting only a nominal fee from their vassals. The city of Toledo nominally appointed the local government, or justicia, of each village, although by the early seventeenth century the villages were accustomed to electing their own o≈cials, who were then formally approved by the city council. In each town the justicia consisted of two regidores, or aldermen; two alcaldes, usually translated as ‘‘mayors,’’ although they exercised judicial as well as executive responsibilities; and an alguacil mayor, or chief constable. The alcaldes, the alguacil mayor, and his assistant constables were responsible for keeping order and administering justice in Yébenes, which included the unpopular task of enforcing the city of Toledo’s property rights in the town against encroachments from local residents. In their judicial and peacekeeping roles, these o≈cials represented the fiel del juzgado in Toledo, who was the administrator of justice for the Montes and all the lands near Toledo owned and governed by the city. The fiel del juzgado, normally a nobleman, was chosen from among the aldermen of the council of the city of Toledo. Once chosen, he held the post for a three-year tenure, although he delegated much of his day-to-day responsibilities to a lieutenant trained in law.≤∫ The fiel del juzgado handled both civil and criminal cases, but ordinarily both types of cases originated with the justicia in the towns themselves and were later remitted to the fiel del juzgado’s court. The legal process by which a local dispute in Yébenes ended up as a paper file in the fiel del juzgado’s archive was long and complex, and the series of cases found in the archive vary in content and quantity from year

14

introduction

to year. Cases began when a resident brought a complaint against someone to the local o≈cials, or when one of the o≈cials heard of some incident that merited investigation. The alcaldes, assisted by the constables, would question the aggrieved party and other witnesses and then decide either to drop the case or to send it to the fiel del juzgado’s court in Toledo for a formal trial. If the accusation had merit, the authorities would arrest the accused—if he or she could be found—and send him or her to stay in the jail of the Santa Hermandad, a rural law-enforcement body headquartered in Toledo.≤Ω Because none of the cases dismissed at this early stage were filed in the fiel del juzgado’s archive, it is impossible to know exactly what criteria local o≈cials used to determine whether to remit the case, but it seems that generally the seriousness of the issue determined whether the case would be sent to Toledo. Although technically all cases were supposed to be forwarded to Toledo, local alcaldes might dismiss the case if they decided that it was unwarranted, or they might deliver a summary oral decision if it was simple enough to resolve without the trouble of further paperwork.≥≠ Violent conflict was one of the most common issues involved in the cases that remain in the fiel del juzgado’s archive, so despite the absence of those cases that were never remitted to Toledo and the loss of an unknowable amount of case records over time, plenty of cases still remain today. From the years 1600 to 1650, 313 cases featuring violent conflict provided the evidence from Yébenes used in my research. Among these are cases dealing with verbal a√ront and slander, which, although not involving physical violence, were treated by the court system in a manner similar to physical assaults and were punishable by law. The second collection of criminal cases used here is the series of Indultos de Viernes Santo, or Good Friday Pardons, granted by the king to convicted criminals throughout Castile every year on Good Friday. The Cámara de Castilla, an organ of the Consejo de Castilla, one of the main administrative councils of the kingdom of Castile, issued the pardons. Unlike the more-common general pardons that the crown issued throughout the year, usually for a fee, to those guilty of lesser o√enses, the Good Friday Pardons were limited in number, supposedly to twenty per year although some years featured as many as forty. In its records, the Cámara de Castilla included transcripts of the original criminal proceedings in their entirety, including depositions from witnesses, aggrieved parties, and

introduction

15

the accused, just like the cases of the fiel del juzgado. Most of the people who received pardons had committed homicide, rape, or other serious crimes, which carried a penalty of death or service in the galley fleets or the presidios, forts maintained by the king of Spain on the North African coast.≥∞ Records no longer exist from years prior to 1618, so a full range of data from the dates corresponding to the cases taken from Yébenes could not be gathered. The 164 cases analyzed in this book were taken from a total of 581 cases during the years 1618 to 1652, representing about 28 percent of all the Good Friday Pardons issued during those years.≥≤ The unusual nature of the cases that received pardons makes the information from these sources enlightening. Although connections with patrons who had influence at court probably played a role in obtaining many of the pardons, the condemned person also had to show some sort of justification for his or her violent behavior. Although Castilian royal pardons did not include ‘‘pardon tales’’ (letters composed by the guilty party explicitly to convince the judicial authorities to show mercy) as in France, they often included the o√ender’s testimony and the excuses that the accused and their supporters gave for their violent behavior.≥≥ To influence the authorities, participants in violent conflict had to argue that their behavior fell within the acceptable bounds of social conduct, revealing what they thought were the borders of permissible behavior as well as what they thought the authorities would stomach. Even in the midst of their violent acts, those involved often showed that they had a grasp of the basics of criminal law and modified their behavior accordingly, choosing one jurisdiction over another as a place of flight or to conduct a duel, for example, or calling on bystanders while a conflict was taking place to act as witnesses later. With this in mind, pardons, and criminal cases more generally, are useful for the study of mores, conduct, and social roles in the practice of early modern Castilian life. This e√ort to justify, provided in the testimony of the condemned and other witnesses, is invaluable for considering the workings of honor.≥∂ The Good Friday Pardons provide a counterpoint to Yébenes, demonstrating the sometimes extraordinary behavior of a wide range of people, including nobles, nonwhite immigrants, servants, slaves, and Gypsies, whose cases featured some peculiarity that merited a pardon from the king.≥∑ We shall return to examine in more detail how the criminal records were produced and what role the justice system played in the rhetoric of

16

introduction

honor in chapter 3. First, however, we will explore the elements of the rhetoric of honor in chapter 2, comparing elite commentators and their understanding of how the duel was meant to operate with the behavior and speech of non-elite Castilians as recorded in the archive of the fiel del juzgado and the Good Friday Pardons. In chapter 4 we will examine men and honor, and then in chapter 5 we will compare women’s experience with men’s. Lastly, in chapter 6 we will return to the issue that the honor plays initially raised: the relationship between adultery and violence. Each chapter will begin with a look at an episode from an honor play that articulates an aspect of the traditional understanding of the honor code that this book is trying to revise. There is no room here for any sustained analysis of the plays and the literary tradition of interpreting them; nevertheless, excerpts from the dramas provide good entrées into the subjects this book will cover. While literary critics no longer believe that the plays accurately depict the behavior of Golden Age Castilians, the plays themselves still speak to each new generation of readers, recreating a bloody, coercive honor code each time.

chapter 2

The Duel and the Rhetoric of Honor

calderón’s the final duel of spain (El postrer duelo de España), probably composed in the early 1650s, provides a dramatic representation of honor’s role in Golden Age society. Calderón took his plot from the story of two gentlemen, Pedro de Torrellas and Jerónimo de Ansa, who fought the last legally sanctioned duel in Spanish history, overseen by the emperor Charles V in 1522.∞ The plot revolves around the competition of the two friends over the a√ections of a woman and the demands that honor places on the four main characters—or the demands they believe honor places on them—which compel them into violent conflict. The result is two intertwined duels. The first occurs in Zaragoza after Jerónimo declares his love for a woman he recently met and asks his friend for help courting her. Pedro agrees, only to learn that the woman Jerónimo desires is Violante, with whom Pedro has entered into a marriage that they kept secret because they did not yet have the wealth to maintain themselves in a household suitable to their rank. Caught between the desire to avoid o√ending a friend by belatedly explaining that he has a prior claim to Violante and the disinclination to help the friend court his own wife, Pedro hesitates. Finally he tells Jerónimo of his relationship, but not marriage, with Violante. Instead of withdrawing his pursuit of Violante, Jerónimo challenges Pedro to a duel for betraying his confidence, believing that Pedro is lying and took an interest in Violante only

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after his friend drew attention to her. While riding to the field chosen for the secret duel, Pedro falls from his horse, injuring his arm. During the combat, Pedro drops his sword. Although Pedro begs to be killed in order to blot out the disgrace of dropping his weapon, Jerónimo instead proposes that the two agree to meet again once Pedro’s arm has healed, and Pedro agrees. Unfortunately for Pedro, Benito, a peasant who was hiding in the area, witnesses the secret duel and sets in motion a train of events that leads to a second duel. The peasant tells others what he has seen. Serafina, who was engaged to marry Pedro until he spurned her to marry Violante, hears of the aborted duel. Seeing her opportunity for revenge, Serafina confronts Pedro and Violante with the knowledge that during a duel Pedro dropped his sword and lived only at the mercy of his opponent. Violante brushes aside Pedro’s excuse of an injured arm, claiming that ‘‘in matters of honor, it is clear / that only one witness [to disgrace] is enough.’’≤ ‘‘You know your duty,’’ she continues, and before she leaves she tells him goodbye, ‘‘until I see you again / Don Pedro, either avenged or dead.’’≥ Pedro, believing that Jerónimo has betrayed him by spreading word of his mishap, demands that Charles V allow a second, public duel so that he can demonstrate his courage. The king of Castile grants the duel and arranges for it to take place in Valladolid. Before it begins, the constable of Castile asks each contestant, ‘‘Do you swear that it is not vengeance / that you are not motivated / by hatred, rancor, or rage to this combat, but only / in order to maintain yourselves in good repute / among honorable opinion?’’∂ They concur, and after the combat begins, Charles V stops the duel, proclaims both men honorable, and vows to beseech Pope Paul III at the Council of Trent to outlaw dueling (anachronistically, since the council did not begin until decades after the historical duel on which the play is based, and Paul III was not yet pope), making this ‘‘the final duel of Spain.’’∑ In this play Calderón outlined the main aspects of the duel in Golden Age Spain. Not a flurry of irrational violence, the duel was instead a carefully choreographed ceremony designed to restore an honorable reputation to someone who had been defamed. An a√ront, real or implied, such as Serafina’s indirect rebuke of Pedro for faltering, was the cause of the dishonor. Truth, and controversy over whether the a√ront was accurate, lay at the core of the duel. Was it true that Pedro had been involved with Violante before Jerónimo took notice of her, and innocently balked at

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revealing his secret? Or did Pedro invent the prior connection to nudge his rival out of the way? Was it true that Jerónimo kept quiet about Pedro’s accident during their secret duel, as he maintained? Or was Pedro correct in assuming that his rival had told others as a way to discredit him as a suitor? The duel was also a careful public ceremony reserved for Spain’s elite. Don Pedro and Don Jerónimo were hidalgos, and for their o≈cial duel they chose as seconds their patrons the Marquis of Brandenburg and the Admiral of Castile. In addition, the a√air was held in a public plaza and overseen by Charles V, king of Castile and Holy Roman Emperor. Above all, honor and the momentum of the duel put irresistible pressure on those who found themselves caught up in conflict over reputation. Don Pedro was forced to duel Don Jerónimo a second time because society, and even his wife, would not accept him otherwise. The formal duel, then, was a ceremony that forced a resolution when problematic issues concerning a√ront, truth, and reputation arose among the elite. The Final Duel of Spain was not an extraordinary play, since Calderón’s view of the motivations and workings of honor here matched other representations of honor and violence on the Golden Age stage. One common theme among the honor plays was the compulsion that honor placed on the protagonists.∏ The Duke of Ferrara in Lope de Vega’s Punishment without Vengeance, pushed by the demands of honor into killing his adulterous wife and son, cries out, ‘‘Honor, you savage enemy!’’ and calls the inventor of the honor code ‘‘barbarous.’’π Echoing him, Don Juan Roca in Calderón’s The Painter of His Dishonor calls the man who invented the honor code that is forcing him to kill his wife and her lover a ‘‘tyrannous lawmaker.’’∫ These men clearly feel trapped by honor, compelled to act against their will in murdering people dear to them. While there has been much debate over whether Lope and Calderón truly believed honor worked that way or were criticizing men who mistakenly believed that honor was the highest motive of all, twentieth-century anthropology helped support the idea that an honor code motivated behavior in Spain. In contrast, observe an actual account of a challenge to duel, taken from the criminal records of Yébenes. Witnesses reported that on May 7, 1615, Eugenio Pérez Oliva, a constable of the town, approached Francisco Gómez de Montemayor at the door of a shoemaker’s shop and asked him about some debts. Gómez replied that he had already paid them, but

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the duel and the rhetoric of honor

Pérez Oliva explained that the fiel del juzgado and the alcaldes of Yébenes had ordered him to pay. Gómez insisted that he already had paid them that very day, and Pérez Oliva responded by accusing him of being drunk. Gómez countered by claiming that Pérez Oliva lied, and the constable then grabbed a shoemaker’s mallet and threw it at Gómez. The hammer missed its intended target and instead knocked the hat o√ Miguel Domínguez, who was coming between them to make peace. Later that day, the alcalde who began a criminal investigation into the a√air described it as a duel, saying that the two men had challenged one another to fight, or ‘‘se desafiaron.’’Ω How was this a duel? A petty o≈cial tossing an artisan’s tool at someone in a shoemaker’s shop is a far cry from the formal confrontation between Don Pedro and Don Jerónimo in The Final Duel of Spain. But while at first glance they may share little in common, interpersonal violence did in fact exhibit meaning and patterns that held true for all grades of sophistication, from peasants and artisans in their spontaneous confrontations to nobles in their formal duels. The formal duel was a ceremony that dealt with a√ront, truth, and reputation, and violence among the non-elite also addressed these three concerns. Like the imaginative work of Golden Age playwrights, dueling manuals, which explain how duels should proceed, provide a large body of commentary on honor. The writers of these books cared little about the behavior of peasants and tradesmen, however, and could scarcely imagine that the non-elite possessed any sort of honor, so there is little explanation of how disputes over honor should proceed in places like Yébenes. But when we look for evidence of actual behavior instead of commentary, noblemen cede center stage to the non-elite. In contrast to the wealth of evidence about the violent confrontations of the non-elite in the criminal records of the fiel del juzgado, noblemen were better able to conceal their dueling from the legal authorities, so there is no way to know the degree to which actual duels conformed to the standards set by dueling manuals.∞≠ Using the mechanics of the formal duel as our guide, we can explore honor among the non-elite by examining the patterns of violent conflict from the court records of Yébenes and the Good Friday Pardons. While there are many similarities between the actual behavior recorded in the criminal records and the way honor and dueling among noblemen were imagined, the di√erences that emerge between the two are also impor-

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tant. The criminal records reveal that unlike its portrayal in honor plays and dueling manuals, honor can best be understood as a rhetoric. Used here, rhetoric means neither today’s literary theorists’ idea of a discourse or literary strategy nor the formal, classical Greek and Roman art of persuasion. The rhetoric of honor simply means the conscious use of phrases, gestures, and actions—including elements of the duel—to convey information about the issues in contention while simultaneously advancing a violent confrontation. Rhetoric of honor is a better term than code of honor because the words and deeds that surrounded honor in violent conflict were not fixed. Instead they were fluid and adaptable, and participants in confrontations—unlike the characters in honor plays—bent them to their own purposes. The rhetoric of honor was something early modern Castilians employed to convey information about the way they viewed themselves, their place in the community, and their judgments on proper and incorrect conduct in social relations among their neighbors.∞∞ Before examining honor in the criminal cases more closely, however, we should first look at the formal duel and at prescriptive work about honor to help us understand the model by which we will compare the non-elite practice of violence and honor.

the duel By the sixteenth century, the Castilian duel had evolved from its medieval origins as a public judicial instrument controlled by royal law into a private recourse for settling points of honor.∞≤ According to medieval Castilian law, the duel was a challenge issued by one nobleman against another to engage in combat in the presence of the king. Jurists sanctioned the judicial duel as the best legitimate way for a man to address a small number of serious accusations, such as treason, levied by a peer when there was no possibility of proving or disproving the allegation in a court of law. Although some noblemen were still able to find foreign (usually Italian) princes who would host judicial duels, successive kings of Castile discouraged the practice and it fell into disuse by the early sixteenth century. The 1522 contest between Pedro de Torrellas and Jerónimo de Ansa, dramatized in The Final Duel of Spain, actually was the last judicial duel staged in the kingdom of Castile.∞≥ Meanwhile the clandestine or private duel had emerged in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe. In Spain a body of dueling manuals arose whose goal was to graft

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the Italian innovation of the private duel onto the Spanish tradition of judicial duels.∞∂ Nobles and soldiers who fought in the Spanish kings’ sixteenth-century wars in Italy were impressed by the new forms of dueling they saw there, and they wrote manuals to explain those rules to Castilians back home—sometimes simply translating Italian manuals from Latin or Italian into Castilian. Italian influence, combined with the need to go underground when conducting duels in Spain, gave the early modern Castilian duel its shape. The private duel was merely an agreement between two men, imagined to be nobles or soldiers in the dueling literature, to meet in a secluded place, perhaps with seconds, to engage in combat over an accusation one had leveled against the other. Because it was no longer sanctioned by law, jurists no longer had control over determining what issues were legitimate reasons for dueling, so the private duel evolved to address a wider variety of insulting accusations than the medieval judicial duel. A succinct explanation of the purpose of the private duel appears in the treatise of one nobleman, Artal de Alagón, the Count of Sástago, who attacked the practice in the late sixteenth century: ‘‘Gentlemen of the world keep an inviolable law never to su√er discourtesy, nor what they call an a√ront, such as any kind of insulting word, and especially to be called a liar, nor to su√er any insolent act. And in these matters one must take satisfaction through revenge in those cases which they take note of, up to taking the life of the o√ender, or to lose one’s life in the defense of the honor which they imagine has been taken from them. And this is done through single combat when they have not found satisfaction through any other means, by the ways and rules for it which they say are indicated by authoritative soldiers and captains.’’∞∑ These rules are accessible to all, even nonsoldiers, because ‘‘the ancients have considered it, and left behind writings.’’∞∏ He went on to point out the implication that honor was extremely insecure, since it took only the ‘‘whim and e√rontery’’ of an enemy to dishonor even the most noble gentleman.∞π Indeed, the vulnerability of one’s honor was a dominant theme in the Golden Age honor plays.∞∫ The writings left behind by the ancients were of course the dueling manuals. There were several Italian dueling-manual writers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, among whom the most popular in Spain were Paris de Puteo, Andrea Alciato, and Girolamo Muzio, or ‘‘Justino-

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23

politano.’’∞Ω There was also an indigenous tradition of dueling manuals in Spain—for example, that of Mosén Diego de Valera—but these tended to focus on the medieval judicial duel, or riepto.≤≠ Translations of the Italian manuals into Castilian from Latin or Italian appeared in the early sixteenth century: Paris de Puteo’s De re militari (On Military Matters), published in 1472, appeared as the anonymous translation Libro llamado batalla de dos (Book Entitled Single Combat ) in 1544; Juan Martín Cordero translated Alciato’s De singulari certamine (On Single Combat ) of 1541 as De la manera de desafío (On the Conduct of Duels) in 1555; and Muzio’s popular Libro del duello (Book of the Duel ), first published in 1550 and reprinted around ten times during the next forty years, appeared in Castilian as El duello (The Duel ) in 1552. Several other less-influential Italian dueling manuals also existed for Spaniards to read in Latin or Italian, and there was even a Spaniard, Diego Castillo de Villasante, who published his own Latin work on dueling in Turin in 1525, Tractatus de duello (Treatise of the Duel ), which then appeared in Castilian as Remedio de desafíos (Advice for Duels).≤∞ Collectively, these manuals set the rules for Spanish dueling in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. First, they made it clear that the duel was for elite men only. Usually the manuals made this point explicitly, as Diego de Castillo Villasante did when he explained that to challenge another to a duel, one must be a ‘‘hidalgo, gentleman, or soldier.’’≤≤ Circumstantial commentary also made it clear that the duel was for the elite only. The proper way to challenge someone to a duel, according to Paris de Puteo, was to send a master of arms with a letter or glove to one’s opponent’s house, accompanied by trumpets or drums—pomp that was beyond the resources of non-elite men.≤≥ Second, the manual writers were careful to explain the legitimate reasons for dueling. While the medieval judicial duel had been meant for very limited purposes, such as accusations of treason, the dueling manuals expanded the range of permissible causes. They all admitted that duels were now normally illegal, and that judicial duels were granted very infrequently. But they argued that custom sanctioned private duels, even if secular and canon law did not, and, unmoored from the laws that had governed the medieval contests, it was left to manual writers such as themselves to explain the causes of duels. Paris de Puteo provided a long list of accusations that would merit challenging a slanderer to a duel, including lèse-majesté, treason, murder,

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homicide during a truce, killing one’s father to gain his inheritance, disgracing an honorable woman, cuckoldry, perjury, denying a debt, and so on. Any of these could spark a duel as long as the accusation could not be proven true or false through witnesses or by any other rational means.≤∂ Villasante provided a similarly long list before finally giving up, claiming there were so many reasons it would take too long to list all of them.≤∑ Third, reputation was clearly central to the duel. So was truth; the point of dueling was to defend oneself from false accusations that impugned one’s reputation. Paris de Puteo was careful to note that if someone was insulted by a true statement, he had no right to duel, since dueling existed only to protect truth and reputation; in this case, a duel would merely be an act of revenge done to protect an ‘‘empty reputation.’’≤∏ Accusations that could be shown to be false were also unsuitable grounds for a duel, as Alciato demonstrated: ‘‘Imagine that someone has challenged you to a duel by calling you the thief of Sempronio’s horse, or the pimp of your own wife, or a disseminator of counterfeit money. If you did not know the horse was Sempronio’s, and you possess it justly, and if you consider your wife chaste and honest, even if you do know that the money is false, without a doubt you are unjustly challenged to a duel.’’≤π Lastly, because maintaining truth and one’s reputation was the purpose of the duel, to be called a liar or to be forced to go back on one’s word was the worst dishonor one could su√er. Or almost the worst—Paris de Puteo closes his manual by debating which would be the worse disgrace: fleeing the scene of a duel or being forced to take back what one had said in order to save one’s life during a duel. Going back on one’s word was better, he concluded, because in that case at least there would be the excuse of being violently forced against one’s will, whereas someone who flees from a duel is a coward.≤∫ While there were di√erences between the various dueling manuals, together they o√ered a tightly structured code for honor, dishonor, and the remedies for disgrace. Taking dueling manuals at face value would mean accepting that once an a√ront was given from one gentleman to another, a series of steps would inevitably take place, one after the other, by which the o√ended and o√ender would come to a resolution. First an a√ront would occur, then possibly a countercharge of lying, then a challenge to fight. Next the challenged would choose a time, place, judge, and weapons. Then the two men would meet at the appointed place, swear oaths, and begin

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their combat. Finally a judge would oversee the fight and rule on the outcome. While there were important choices to be made at each stage of the process, the manuals portrayed the ceremony of the duel as a relentless journey from a√ront to violence. Lending strength to the idea of dueling as a closely regulated system was the manual writers’ zeal in imagining every detail and possible wrinkle in the ceremony and coming up with a solution to all the problems they posed. For example, in the last two books of his manual Paris de Puteo considered seventy-nine di√erent ambivalent outcomes to combat and gave a verdict on each. What if the combatants have agreed to fight until ten lances have been broken, but one of them falls from his horse before meeting that quota? What if one falls from his horse, but then seizes the reins of his opponent’s horse to make him fall to the ground too? If one duelist is wounded in the arm and the other in the leg, who is the winner? Some of the scenarios he entertained were bizarre. If one duelist loses his nose, and the other an eye, which one is the most honorable? (The one who keeps his nose.) There was one possibility for which Paris de Puteo could find no resolution. If one combatant falls, and the other one stands above him with a blade in hand demanding that he admit his defeat, then the fallen one mortally wounds the standing one in the belly while the standing one simultaneously slashes the throat of the fallen one, then the one who fell first (and is now wounded in the neck) manages to stand and walk around the field for a little while, then they both die, who is the winner? Paris de Puteo ruminated that anyone who dies cannot be the victor, but the one who fell became a prisoner and so must have lost—but then again the one standing above him must have released his prisoner when he was wounded, and so he must have lost. If they both died at the same time perhaps the challenger would be the vanquished one because he had not proven that which he swore was the truth, but since he killed his opponent he would seem to have won. In the end Paris de Puteo concluded, ‘‘I will leave this decision up to someone who can approach it with greater wisdom.’’≤Ω Although this elaborate example drifts into absurdity, the point remains that just as Charles V and the constable of Castile carefully oversaw the duel between Don Pedro and Don Jerónimo in The Final Duel of Spain, making them swear oaths and appear with seconds, carefully checking their arms, and then stopping the fight when the emperor decided it was enough, so too did the dueling manuals legislate in precise detail the correct manner for starting, fighting, and deciding duels.

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As the sixteenth century went on Spain produced its own tradition of writing about the duel, although now that royal law and the Council of Trent had outlawed the duel, these new treatises were no longer guides to dueling but instead tended to proclaim themselves attacks on the practice of dueling. Their authors were usually members of the military and administrative class of Spanish nobility who were knowledgeable about Italian dueling from their service of campaigning in Italy, administering the Spanish king’s possessions there, and serving as ambassadors. They were also familiar with the manners and dispositions of their comrades, soldiers and gentlemen from Spain who were zealous about honor and keen to duel. Their main objection to dueling was that it was too widespread and often staged over unimportant matters. The writers undermined their condemnation, however, when they admitted that in some rare instances, the duel was the only way to settle an a√ront. Through this loophole, anyone could subjectively interpret his own situation as one in which a duel was justified. Most of these works, like the Italian dueling manuals and their translations, were then given over to minute examinations of all the possible eventualities of dueling. Just like the manuals they claimed to be condemning, they covered every possible circumstance in loving detail and supported their decisions with innumerable examples from the history of dueling, stretching from contemporary duels in Italy and Spain back to one-on-one combats from Greek and Roman literature and even the Old Testament (for example, David and Goliath). The net result, however much the authors protested that dueling was overused and unjust in most contemporary cases, was a clear expression of hopeless devotion to the idea of dueling as an ennobling ceremony that was justified when legitimate points of honor arose.≥≠ To take one example, Jerónimo de Urrea (1510–65?) was an Aragonese captain, ambassador, and finally governor of Italian provinces ruled by Spain, including Taranto and Apulia. He was a client of the Duke of Alba and a courtier who enjoyed the favors of Charles V. He was also a man of letters who composed poetry and at least one chivalric novel, and he translated Italian works into Castilian, including Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Urrea published his Dialogue on True Military Honor (Diálogo de la verdadera honra militar) in Venice in 1556. Cast as a conversation in Seville between two friends, Franco and Altamirano, the Dialogue opens

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with Altamirano telling Franco that he, a soldier who has returned from the wars in Italy to Castile hoping to find peace, is now resolved to return to Italy because the laws of Castile ‘‘prevent hidalgos from taking their swords in hand to defend their honor.’’≥∞ Altamirano is upset because he has been insulted while gambling and can do nothing about it. During the course of the Dialogue, Franco convinces his friend that ‘‘true honor’’ consists of inward virtue and that no one can take that away from a man. Instead, anyone who acts provocatively only damages his own reputation. Franco admits, however, that in some rare cases a duel is permissible, and much of the book is given over to a discussion of the minutiae of dueling etiquette, backed by historical examples. Despite his ostensible opposition to the duel, Urrea’s book became a reference work for would-be duelists and theorists.≥≤ Urrea’s assertion that real honor was virtue was the standard reasoning employed by those who criticized the duel. In 1640 Juan Antonio Lozano, an Aragonese priest, published The Exile and Scourge of the Book of the Duel (Destierro y azote del libro del duelo), an anti-dueling manifesto directed squarely at Muzio’s Libro del duello, a seemingly influential tract since it was cited by others.≥≥ Here he reminded readers that God commands His followers not to take revenge on every slight but instead to love their neighbors as themselves. True honor does not depend on the opinion of others but rather consists in virtue, in doing good deeds. Even Aristotle recognized that true honor is simply virtue. Since honor consists only of one’s true merit, nothing anyone can say, however o√ensive, can diminish someone else’s honor, and indeed the most honorable act of all is pardoning one’s enemies.≥∂ Stripping away all the ceremonies from the duel exposed it as simple assault and homicide. As Juan Martín Cordero put it in the dedication (to his patron Gonzago, Duke of Ariano and Prince of Mofetta) of his translation of Andrea Alciato’s dueling manual, the duel was simply ‘‘the manner by which one man should kill another.’’≥∑ In The Final Duel of Spain, Calderón had the naive Benito, the peasant who witnessed the clandestine duel between Pedro de Torrellas and Jerónimo de Ansa, describe what he saw in facetious terms: ‘‘They came to the farm / to kill each other politely / . . . the slashes / they made at each other were so smartly put / and so honorable / they would have served / El Cid well for cutting his calzas.’’ El Cid was of course the medieval chivalric

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hero of Spain, and calzas were a medieval style of pantaloons with rips cut into them—Calderón mentioned them to mock the sentiments of honor held by the two duelists as anachronistic.≥∏ No matter how strongly these authors inveighed against the duel, however, they consistently undermined their case by allowing loopholes for a few cases in which duels were licit. Urrea, for example, believed that the same qualities that impelled a gentleman to duel also made him a good soldier. He was less eager to stop dueling altogether than he was to stamp out those duels that wasted the energy and lives of soldiers that should instead devote themselves to serving Charles V. Military discipline, rather than Christian morality, was his main worry. Other writers took the same approach as fencing master Jerónimo Carranza, who attacked most duels as something done for spurious reasons but also allowed for the idea of a legitimate Christian self-defense that justified some duels, thus validating his profession and skills.≥π Even Artal de Alagón, who attacked the duel and the false sense of honor that in his opinion led to most duels in the first 250 pages of his tract, A Concordance of Divine and Human Laws for Demystifying the Iniquitous Law of Revenge (Concordia de las leyes divinas y humanas y desengaño de la iniqua ley de la venganza), admitted in the last 5 pages, ‘‘I do not pretend to condemn every instance of single combat, nor to discourage men from preserving their honor, and not respond to and retaliate for God’s honor or one’s own, in the manner that should be done in those cases in which it is permitted to do so. . . . Rather than losing honor, it is better to lose one’s life, if there is no other way of defending it, than with this [duel] one’s own honor should be preserved.’’≥∫ It was only dueling over small matters that Artal de Alagón condemned—but without precisely defining the di√erence between small and great matters. He left the decision up to the subjective consideration of the would-be duelists. Of course, no duelist would ever proclaim his own cause to be inconsequential, and the subjective interpretation of legitimate causes for dueling seems to have been a real problem in seventeenth-century Spain. The Count-Duke of Olivares, the royal favorite who directed the Spanish government from 1621 to 1643, detected an upsurge of dueling in Castile during the reign of his patron, Philip IV.≥Ω In a memorandum aimed at reducing the number of duels fought, a committee convened by Olivares argued that while there were a few legitimate reasons for dueling, ninetynine out of one hundred duels were fought for an ‘‘a√ectation of valor’’

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and a ‘‘weakness of spirit’’—the fear that if a nobleman did not immediately respond to any kind of a√ront others would assume him to be a coward.∂≠ In other words, the duel persisted because men subjectively defined any threat to their personal honor as weighty enough to begin a duel.∂∞ One innovation that the later writers against the duel added was a concern for reconciliation. At several points in Urrea’s Dialogue on True Military Honor, the anti-dueling Franco forces the pro-dueling Altamirano to admit that reconciliation is a virtue.∂≤ In order to get ‘‘satisfaction’’ for an a√ront without violence, Franco suggests going to another knight to arbitrate the case between two would-be duelists. Or, if one’s opponent is lower in rank, simply let the law punish him. And if one has o√ended someone else, apologize. Altamirano objects at this point, asserting that ‘‘I would never take back what I had said in any event, even if what I had said was false and against all reason.’’∂≥ Franco corrects him, explaining that while going back on one’s word at the point of a sword out of cowardice is shameful, doing so voluntarily in order to uphold justice is honorable.∂∂ The two characters of the Dialogue then explore all the di√erent ways one could avoid dueling after a confrontation: by apologizing for an a√ront or overlooking one, by inducing one’s opponent to take back what he had said, by having the seconds of a duel call the duel o√ once the two opponents had reached the field of honor and shown themselves willing to fight, and so on.∂∑ Other commentators on dueling also promoted reconciliation, including some of the earlier Italian authors who promoted the duel, such as Girolamo Muzio, who wanted to limit the violence done during duels and even curb the number of duels fought.∂∏ Judging by the amount of attention that early modern jurists and dueling-manual writers focused on the series of preliminary steps leading to combat, these steps were the most important aspect of the duel. For example, Paris de Puteo’s dueling manual included nine books, or chapters, only two of which covered the combat itself. Book 1 was an overview of the duel, book 2 was on the field of combat, book 3 covered choosing the day to fight and book 4 the arms used, book 5 handled the use of champions to fight in one’s stead, book 6 handled the causes of duels, book 7 covered how to handle issues of precedent when members of various grades of royal and noble status engaged in the duel, and only books 8 and 9 related to the combat itself.∂π The challenge to fight, called

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the desafío, was the most important of these steps, and, indeed, the term came to signify the entire ceremony, replacing the medieval terms lid and riepto.∂∫ When discussing duels, legal experts expended enormous energy on the criteria for determining which party was the challenger and which the challenged, an important distinction because the party who was challenged to a duel had the right to choose the time, place, and weapons used. By extending an o√er to fight on equal terms at a place and time of the challenged party’s choosing, the desafío was what distinguished the formal duel from a brawl.∂Ω The intentional a√ront was the second most important aspect of the duel, together with giving one’s opponent the lie, if that occurred. Which a√ronts were legitimate causes of dueling varied over time and between experts. The original medieval judicial duel, like the formal confrontation between Don Pedro and Don Jerónimo before Charles V in The Final Duel of Spain, was the most restricted. Diego de Valera, in his late fifteenthcentury treatise, made it clear that only the accusation of treason against one’s lord or the betrayal of another knight could justify a judicial duel.∑≠ After the rise of private duels such as the first confrontation between Don Pedro and Don Jerónimo, the list of acceptable causes began to grow, unchecked by the oversight of any judicial authorities or laws. And as commentators like Olivares and Artal de Alagón pointed out, in practice would-be duelists did not feel constrained by any list of causes the manual writers spelled out. But the basic cause of dueling was an a√ront that sullied the reputation of a gentleman or soldier. To accuse an opponent of lying, or ‘‘give the lie’’ (in Castilian, desmentir), could either serve as a response to one of these a√ronts or act by itself as an intentional a√ront. Paris de Puteo, Villasante, Alciato, and Urrea all emphasized that the true heart of the duel was a dispute about the truth of an a√ront, and an attempt to defend the truth of what one has said or to force one’s opponent to retract his words. The Final Duel of Spain follows a similar pattern, with truthfulness at the heart of the dispute between Don Pedro and Don Jerónimo as both friends suspected the other of concealing the truth. After covering the challenge, the intentional a√ront, and giving the lie, dueling experts paid surprisingly little attention to the actual combat that concluded a duel—so little, in fact, as to suggest that the combat was incidental to the entire a√air, the true purpose of which was to make statements about one’s own honor and worth and to discredit one’s oppo-

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nent during the preliminaries. A good example of how this worked in practice was the proposed duel between Charles V and Francis I of France that emerged in the context of the long series of wars between the two. Charles’s captains had captured Francis at the Battle of Pavia in 1525. Charles released him in 1526 under the condition that he give up French claims to Italy and the Netherlands and in addition give Burgundy over to the Habsburgs and leave two of his sons in Spain as hostages. Afterward, Francis refused to comply and later sent a messenger to Charles challenging him to a duel and demanding that he pay damages for the Sack of Rome by imperial troops in 1527 and that he release Francis’s two sons. Charles alleged that Francis had lied in order to be released from captivity, proving himself ‘‘contemptible and villainous,’’ and challenged him to a duel in return. Of course, there was little chance that the political communities of either France or the Habsburg empire would allow their sovereigns to risk their lives in single combat, and the rulers must have known this when they issued their threats. More important was the posturing that both men were able to perform through debating about the preliminaries of dueling—whether to duel at all and, if so, who would be the challenger, who the challenged, and so on. These negotiations allowed each of them to issue important declarations of propaganda, smearing the character of his opponent and upholding the rightfulness of his own cause. There was a flurry of pronouncements and advice on both sides from all sorts of commentators, and the challenge became a classic set piece to be debated by writers on the duel. Urrea, for example, had the hotheaded Altamirano praise Francis for refusing to listen to the captain of arms that Charles sent to him in Paris. The captain meant to tell Francis that although the French king had no right to challenge him, the emperor would agree to combat anyway to avoid further war. Altamirano believed that hearing the captain would merely waste more time on words. Not so, replied Urrea’s stand-in, Franco, ‘‘because one does not go down the route of the duel without many words beforehand, in order to determine and make known the cause and claim, and to determine who is the actor or accused. Any other way would be a barbaric combat, without order.’’∑∞ Urrea makes it clear that throughout the negotiations each man tried to influence the proceedings to make it appear as though he himself was eager for combat, while pinning the blame on the other for delaying and avoiding the duel. The core issue of the duel was less the conditions of

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Francis’s release from captivity than which monarch was the true gentleman—frank, honest, and willing to risk his life—and which was the liar— unchivalrous and cowardly. Negotiations and renewed challenges persisted until 1538 but ultimately broke down over who was the challenger and who the challenged, with Charles maintaining that since Francis was not a true gentleman, he had no right to challenge anyone to a duel.∑≤ Single combat would have solved none of the political problems that divided the Habsburgs and Valois, and it probably was never the goal of either monarch. However, the denunciations and propaganda issued by both courts over the preliminaries of dueling paralleled the dueling manuals that spent more ink on determining the challenger from the challenged, choosing the field, and so on than on the actual fight. However, the failure of Charles V and Francis I to ever meet in combat should not be interpreted as a failure of the duel. The two kings and their supporters made great use of all the arguments over the preliminaries as a way to generate propaganda for their causes.∑≥ The ceremonies of the duel o√ered a mechanism for disputing honor, a template ready to impose order on any case, no matter how complex. Villasante demonstrated this mechanism when he explained that the proper way to issue a challenge was by ‘‘saying, Pedro or Juan you have said this or that, or you have done such a thing, and I intend to defend my reputation and honor as best I can, and I say to you that you have done ill or you have not said the truth in what you have said, and you lied and you still lie and you will lie however many times you say that which you said, say, and will say it, and if you do not prove it to be the truth or demand it of me, you will remain a poor knight or soldier.’’∑∂ By encompassing endless details and possibilities, the dueling manuals provided an inflexible system to be applied to whatever a√ront arose to whichever individuals. In reality, however, duels were malleable tools that opponents like Charles V and Francis I could use to their own ends.

the criminal records How did all of this written discussion of the duel compare to the actual practice of violent confrontations among the non-elite in the criminal records? How was the tossing of a shoemaker’s mallet by a constable of Yébenes related to the proposed duel between Charles V and Francis I? The criminal records of Yébenes show the underlying dynamics in the patterns

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of violent conflict among the townsmen there to be similar to those of the duel.∑∑ First, however, we should briefly discuss the process by which the words and actions of people in Yébenes became written into the criminal records held by the fiel del juzgado. The course of each violent confrontation can be divided roughly into two main stages, the judicial and the extralegal. The judicial stage included the investigation, calling of witnesses, imprisoning of suspects and seizure of their goods, interrogations, briefs, pardons, sentencing, payments, and of course the paperwork that all this judicial activity produced. We enjoy relatively easy and uncomplicated access to the workings of the judicial side of conflicts because the records of the cases held in the archives of the fiel del juzgado are in fact the documentation produced by the investigations, recorded by the legal scribes, or escribanos, who attended the authorities throughout the proceedings. The extralegal stage of the dispute was the violent confrontation that led up to the intervention of judicial authorities. These confrontations varied from brief, spontaneous exchanges of blows to long histories of accusation, calumny, resentment, and aggression. Knowledge about the extralegal conflict is more problematic, since information concerning what occurred prior to the criminal investigation is limited to statements the participants and witnesses to the conflict made when questioned by the judicial authorities. We cannot take witnesses’ depositions as representative of the objective truth about what occurred during the confrontation since that was precisely the goal of the investigation—to determine the truth about what happened. The judicial stage was the process by which the judicial authorities sifted through the confusing, often contradictory, and sometimes incomplete statements made about what happened and who was responsible, while the witnesses and participants tried their best to influence the proceedings to achieve what each of them thought would be a just conclusion. Although we will never know what really happened in the many cases where participants disagreed over the events that took place, it matters little for the task at hand, because each statement to the judicial authorities, accurate or not, was an attempt to define and explain correct and incorrect behavior by employing information about motives, behavior, and the results of conflict that was plausible to the o≈cials recording their statements.∑∏ What were the common assumptions about proper behavior among the accused, accusers, and authorities? Which a√ronts would the court agree were too insulting to let go? Which responses would the judge

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deem appropriate? Those involved in violent confrontation calculated how to spin their behavior to present it in the best possible light to the authorities: innocent yet plausible. Witnesses did the same thing as they took sides between combatants and made sure they themselves would not be found culpable of any wrongdoing.∑π The court records show that the behavior of Castilians involved in violent conflict displayed many of the same concerns as the dueling manuals, with one important di√erence. The logic of the duel remained the same as it was articulated by Valera, Paris de Puteo, Alciato, and the rest. But here, rather than follow a narrowly circumscribed course of action that was all but predetermined, disputants could pick and choose from among the elements of the duel, freely ignoring aspects of the dueling code while adopting others. Although no gentlemen appear in the records from Yébenes, the basic outlines of violent conflict would be familiar to the readers of dueling manuals: an escalation or reconciliation of a dispute between two men over reputation and truth, involving a√ront, giving the lie, challenging one another to fight, and physical violence. What follows will be an examination of these moves in a logical process, but it is important to keep in mind that what may look like a strict code as it is laid out on the page was in truth a disorganized array of actions impulsively chosen by the disputants. The similarity between the duels of noblemen, as imagined by the dueling manuals, and the conflicts among the residents of Yébenes was strongest during ‘‘popular duels,’’ those occasions when the townsmen, too, termed their fights desafíos.∑∫ Normally the scribes just used the term desafío without describing the specific actions and words that took place. Some popular duels more plainly echoed the patterns of elite duels than the hammer-throwing incident between the constable Pérez Oliva and Gómez de Montemayor. In 1613, for example, Juan Nieto, a cartwright, wounded Gregorio Vélez Franco, a schoolmaster. When asked by legal authorities why he had challenged and then wounded the teacher in a desafío, Nieto justified himself by saying that the schoolmaster had approached him in the plaza and asked him for two reales (silver coins) that Nieto owed him for teaching his son to read. Nieto replied that he did not have the money at that time but would pay the schoolmaster later that day. The schoolmaster responded with an insult that, Nieto claimed, ‘‘obligated [him] to fight.’’ Nieto told his opponent to come along with him if he

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wanted to fight, and then he led his opponent outside the jurisdiction of the town. There they each drew their swords, and the teacher ended up with a wounded left hand.∑Ω This encounter included an initial dispute, an intentional a√ront, and a challenge to hold a premeditated fight at a di√erent time and place, just as dueling manuals suggested, finding a site away from the public eye where they hoped to avoid detection and prosecution for dueling. Of course, most of the violence recorded in the criminal archives was much less formal and more spontaneous than the popular duels.∏≠ But even when they did not call their confrontations desafíos, opponents often incorporated elements of the duel—a√ront, truth, and reputation—in their disputes. For example, to give the lie to an opponent was a common response to an a√ront. Eugenio Pérez Oliva, accused in the shoemaker’s shop of lying, had recourse himself to give the lie to an opponent in 1620. Pérez Oliva and Bartolomé Ximénez, another constable, were walking down the street when they encountered a priest named Daniel. Ximénez testified that the priest began arguing with Pérez Oliva over a debt that the constable was trying to get the priest to pay. The priest claimed that he had already paid the money, and Pérez Oliva responded that the priest was lying and slapped him in the face.∏∞ In another example from 1621, two young men got into a dispute in the middle of the street that led them to draw their swords and attack one another. None of the witnesses questioned knew how the dispute originated, nor did legal o≈cials question anyone about its origins during the investigation. What the witnesses and the o≈cials did both focus on was the fact that one of the men had accused the other of lying.∏≤ As in duels, accusations of lying lent seriousness to the dispute, elevating it from a relatively unimportant issue into a matter of truthfulness and the reputation of one’s opponent. Other disputes involved actions that served to challenge one’s opponent without precisely giving the lie. On September 1, 1613, Juan de Ortega complained to the justicia that Lorente Martín had slapped and kicked Francisco, Ortega’s five-year-old son, whose arm was now swollen and probably broken. Moreover, when Francisco’s mother, María Díaz, approached Lorente Martín’s wife, Ana Díaz, and demanded to know why her husband had mistreated her son, Ana Díaz refused to acknowledge her husband’s ill treatment of the boy and responded, ‘‘Get away, you wicked, drunken woman.’’∏≥ (In his own statement, Lorente Martín ex-

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plained that Francisco had been throwing rocks at Martín’s own small son, knocking him o√ a mule.) Similarly, in 1609 a bystander reported that Juan Pérez Oliva had approached Francisco López de Ruedas and asked him why he had struck Pérez Oliva’s aunt. Instead of responding directly to Pérez Oliva’s question, López de Ruedas took o√ense and told him not to speak to him that way. Pérez Oliva became angry in turn, and he began to swear in a loud voice that he could prove that López de Ruedas had committed ‘‘thirteen or twelve’’ thefts, continuing to berate him until constables broke up the confrontation.∏∂ And in 1625 Francisco López de Ruedas accused García Sánchez, a velvet-worker, of calling his brother Diego López de Ruedas ‘‘dirty’’ and ‘‘infamous.’’ Witnesses explained that the brother had accused García Sánchez of telling constables in Toledo where to find his son, whom they were seeking. García Sánchez told Diego López de Ruedas that this ‘‘was in his imagination,’’ to which Diego López de Ruedas took o√ense, and the confrontation led eventually to insults and threats.∏∑ To label an accusation ‘‘imaginary’’ would seem to be as close as one could get to calling one’s opponent a liar without actually giving the lie. Reputation was at the core of violent disputes in Yébenes, just as it was in duels. Disputants sometimes made explicit reference to their good reputation during confrontations, as Gabriel García Ruiz did when he and Lucas García Ximénez struggled over scraps from a butcher’s shop, which both claimed to be theirs by right. A witness described García Ruiz calling out, ‘‘I am the son of good people.’’∏∏ More often, people spoke about reputation during legal proceedings. Andrés Ruiz Calero, while bringing suit against Isabel Cid in 1613, claimed that ‘‘she had said many insulting words to me against my good reputation and name . . . with the intention of taking away my honor.’’ He argued that she should be punished for slandering him, ‘‘as I am a very honest man, a good Christian, fearful of God and of my conscience and not being accustomed to do such base things and being unmarried and being just about to become married, and descending as I do from honorable parents and relatives and from a rich and prominent family.’’∏π Here Ruiz Calero invoked several of the key claims that constituted what early modern Castilians thought honor to be—in other words, he was using terms from the rhetoric of honor. He referred to his own character, his status as a good Christian, and his membership in an honorable and wealthy family and network of relatives.

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It would be easy to dismiss his claims as stock language used in legal complaints by disputants to pad their grievances, but when put into the context of hundreds of cases, it appears not to be just empty legalism. Castilians who had been o√ended by their neighbors were careful to present an alternative view of their character and place in the community to counteract the damaging slander that had imperiled their reputations. Plainti√s usually linked their claim to specific statements and actions made by their opponents, and they often sought to refute them. This was the case with Juan Bermejo, who in 1611 brought a suit against the widow Ana Fernández for calling him a miserly rich man who devoured the poor. Bermejo felt the need to state in his criminal complaint that she did so ‘‘wholly with the intention of taking away and staining our honor [that is, his and his wife’s], for in truth we are honest, rich, and principal people who acted charitably to the poor in need.’’∏∫ Relatively prominent and wealthy residents of Yébenes made frequent appeals to their own reputation, but all classes of society could and did make such appeals. Juan de Quiñones brought suit against another man in 1627 for saying ‘‘ugly and insulting words unworthy of my rank,’’ even though Quiñones was only a servant, hardly an exalted rank.∏Ω The need these people felt to rebut insults and assert their honorable character underscored the fragility of public reputation and the corresponding power of a√ronts. While dueling manuals tried to limit the number of a√ronts that could serve as legitimate cause for a duel, there was a vast and rich array of insults that townsmen in Yébenes could choose from while engaged in their own, more casual confrontations. The a√ronts and blows that Yébenes townsmen employed in their confrontations served a double purpose: they were attempts to lash out and wound, but they could also convey meaning. Sometimes the meaning expressed was simple, one of disrespect and scorn for the other, what the dueling manuals called menosprecio or menos valer—literally, ‘‘to devalue.’’ ‘‘My husband is more of an hombre de bien and mas honrado [more honorable] than yours,’’ María Camacha said to Gaspar Rodríguez’s wife in 1612, according to a complaint made by Rodríguez. (Camacha’s husband was Juan Nieto, the cartwright who wounded the schoolmaster Gregorio Vélez Franco in a duel in 1613.) Rodríguez claimed that Nieto himself also had claimed to be more of an hombre de bien than Rodríguez. Hombre de bien means ‘‘man of property,’’ but it also connoted being a good man, so Nieto

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and Camacha were claiming that they were better, more honorable, and wealthier than Rodríguez; the three virtues went hand in hand. Note also that while most of the time the words honor and honorable appear in the criminal records when witnesses were speaking to the questioning authorities, María Camacha allegedly used the term as a way to insult her opponent, indicating that such language was used on the street as well as in the courtroom.π≠ ‘‘I am as good as you’’ was a common, unequivocal response to an a√ront. The most commonly used insults were also the bluntest instruments, conveying little meaning beyond simple menosprecio. In the shoemaker’s shop, the constable Pérez Oliva called Francisco Gómez de Montemayor a drunkard (borracho), one of the standard slurs that were used time and time again in Yébenes. Other insults expanded on the idea of scorn somewhat but were still plain and clear, implying simply that one’s opponent did not live up to community standards for behavior in some way. One common epithet was bellaco, a vague term that could mean something mild, such as ‘‘fool,’’ or something more serious, such as ‘‘base’’ or ‘‘wicked.’’ (It was an analogue to the English term villain.)π∞ Other insults included infame, meaning ‘‘a person of poor reputation’’; pícaro, ‘‘vagabond’’ or ‘‘rascal’’; tonto, ‘‘fool’’; soplon, ‘‘sneak’’ or ‘‘informer’’; ruin hombre or ruin mujer, ‘‘a contemptible, fallen man or woman’’; perro, ‘‘dog’’; and sucio, ‘‘filthy,’’ often used in combination with puerco to signify a ‘‘dirty pig.’’ Calling someone a dirty pig could also be an anti-Semitic slur, which reminds us that the meaning conveyed by a√ronts could also be more complicated and serious, addressing a specific damning quality allegedly possessed by one’s opponent. The terms Judío (Jew), moro (Moor or Muslim), and Morisco (a member of the ethnic minority who had descended from Muslims) all related to the purity of one’s lineage and one’s status as an ethnically pure Old Christian. Because the Inquisition targeted members of these religious and ethnic minorities, and because, after around 1610, all Moriscos had been banished from Castile, these a√ronts were often taken seriously. Cornudo (cuckold) and puta (whore) were insults specifically aimed at the sexual purity of an individual or family, as was the less-used hijo de puta (son of a whore) and adultera (adulteress). As we shall see, these insults were ambiguous for seventeenth-century Castilians to interpret, and that ambiguity has continued for modern observers. While they were often meant in earnest, Castilians also employed them

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not because they really meant what they said but because these terms— especially the sexual insults—were the most powerful weapons available in the rhetoric of honor.π≤ Some insults took on special force because they alluded to qualities that were punishable by law. One common insult was ladrón (thief ), alleging theft or fraud in the marketplace. We have seen an instance of this already, when Juan Pérez Oliva swore in a loud voice that he could prove that Francisco López de Ruedas, whom Pérez Oliva had confronted, had committed multiple thefts.π≥ In another case in 1632 Juan de Balboa and his brother Francisco brought suit against Gabriel Ruiz for approaching them with rocks in his hands, ready to throw them, and calling them ‘‘pícaros and thieves,’’ among other things. Gabriel Ruiz claimed that he intervened only because they were fighting with their sister-in-law, Ruiz’s sister, and a witness claimed that Francisco de Balboa responded to his aggressor in kind, saying, ‘‘You are the pícaro thief who, if you went to the Royal Jail in Toledo, we would see how you come out.’’π∂ Accusing someone of acting as a false witness was another way to insult an opponent, as Mateo Pérez did when he called Bartolomé Barba a thief and a false witness in 1613.π∑ It is easy to see how being a thief could be linked to bearing false witness, which was also illegal. Early modern Castile was an exceptionally litigious society where civil lawsuits brought by one resident against another continually disrupted peaceful relations. Being accused of acting as a false witness or of constantly suing one’s neighbors had the implication of preying on another’s property.π∏ In 1611, Pedro Fernández Bujío and his brother-in-law Pedro Cobo accused Catalina Hernández of saying publicly that they were ‘‘thieves’’ and ‘‘usurpadores de haciendas’’ (dispossessors or expropriators of estates) for trying to obtain her property, presumably through a civil suit.ππ Another powerful tactic was to attack the lineage and blood purity of one’s opponent. This was a strategy uniquely suited to Spain, where maintaining one’s purity of blood—that is, keeping one’s family untainted by any Jewish or Muslim ancestry—was a serious concern. In 1615 Marcos de la Torre Belluga complained that Inés Díaz had called him ‘‘a bellaco pícaro Jew,’’ and in response he asserted to the justicia that he was ‘‘an honorable man, a good Christian’’ and the member of a family of ‘‘good Old Christians free from the whole race of Moors and Jews.’’π∫ Similarly, when, according to Juan Carrasco, Alonso de Avila ‘‘called him a Morisco and the

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son of a Morisca [a Morisco woman] and [said] it could be proven,’’ Carrasco’s response was to line up dozens of witnesses to testify that his family was, and always had been, good Old Christians.πΩ Racial slurs were also employed, as happened when Alonso Carrasco accused Francisco Esteban, age fifteen, of calling Carrasco’s wife, María Ruiz, a ‘‘mestiza,’’ along with many other insults, when she tried to intervene in a fight between the teenager and their son Jusepe.∫≠ Similarly, in 1629 Francisco de la Cruz accused Juan de Espinar, his sister Quiteria, and their mother, Catalina Sánchez, of having called him a ‘‘son of one of the negros in Granada,’’ among other o√ensive things.∫∞ There were people living in Yébenes who were referred to as ‘‘negros’’ and ‘‘slaves,’’ so it is likely that there were a handful of black Africans living on the margins of the town’s society. In this last example, however, the reference to Granada, the last part of Spain to be conquered from the Muslims, leaves open the possibility that the de la Cruz family was using the term negro to mean ‘‘Moor,’’ an Arab or Berber native of North Africa. A third category of serious accusation was to impugn the sexual purity of one’s opponents and their families. Cornudo meant ‘‘cuckold’’ and was often used to attack a man’s reputation, as when Pasqual Rodríguez accused Francisco Ruiz Pañinas in 1621 of coming to his house and calling him ‘‘cuckold,’’ along with other insults, while attacking him with a pitchfork.∫≤ The most common sexual term of abuse for women was puta, meaning ‘‘whore,’’ which could mean an actual prostitute or, more commonly, simply an adulteress.∫≥ For example, in 1611 Antonio Fernández accused ‘‘la Guzmana,’’ the wife of Marcos García Carbondio, of calling his wife, Ysabel Descobar, a whore who was ‘‘mançebiada’’ with a priest, meaning that she was his mistress.∫∂ Amancebado was another common allegation, used against either men or women to refer to a longterm illicit sexual a√air, usually involving the keeping of a mistress by a man and often involving cohabitation. Adúltero and adúltera, meaning ‘‘adulterer,’’ and desverguenza or desvergonzada, meaning ‘‘shameless,’’ were other words that could refer to sexual impropriety. It is important to remember that adultery and simple fornication were punishable o√enses under religious and civil law in early modern Castile, and there are several cases in the criminal records of men and women being prosecuted for being amancebado. Lastly, cabrón, literally meaning ‘‘goat’’ but with the additional meanings of ‘‘bastard’’ or ‘‘cuckold’’ (Sebastián de Covarrubias,

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in his seventeenth-century Castilian dictionary, explained that this meaning comes from the word often implying a castrated goat), was another common insult used to impugn the sexual purity of an opponent’s family, as was hijo de puta, or ‘‘son of a whore.’’∫∑ The frequency with which Castilians called one another cuckold and whore testifies to the power given to these insults in the rhetoric of honor. Certainly sexual reputation is a chief concern of the protagonists of the Golden Age honor plays, which together with modern anthropology has given rise to the belief by modern observers that sexual purity among women and the ability of men to ensure the fidelity and chastity of their wife and daughters were the main components of honor in Spanish society.∫∏ At first glance, the language found in the criminal records seems to support this idea, but further prodding shows that it is not quite true. For example, in 1628 the judicial authorities questioned María López and confronted her with a scenario they had pieced together after a complaint by Pedro Martín, a miller, and after questioning several witnesses. According to what the authorities had heard, while Martín was passing by López’s house, she rushed out into the crowded street and called him a ‘‘bellaco cuckold.’’ Martín responded by asking, ‘‘By whom?’’ to which she responded, ‘‘By the old shoemaker who lives in your house.’’∫π Initially, Martín did not take López’s a√ront seriously. Skeptically, he asked her for details, but then he became angry and decided to take action, implying that cuckold could be either a powerful accusation or an insult chosen casually and only for its ability to hurt. One witness to the exchange, Lorenzia García, described the confrontation in similar terms and said that ‘‘although it is true that this might cause a scandal,’’ it would not, because María López was a ‘‘dishonorable woman who speaks ill’’ while Ysabel de Zepeda, Martín’s wife, is an ‘‘honorable woman’’ of ‘‘good life and behavior.’’∫∫ The implication here is that cuckold was not necessarily a charge that compelled a savage response, as the honor plays portrayed it. Instead, residents of Yébenes were used to hearing the word and, o√ensive though it was, could distinguish between serious and spurious insults. For example, in 1615 María Barba and Ana López Beata, a weaver, got into a disagreement about whether one had sent the other some flour, according to a woman who was in Ana López Beata’s house when it happened. Later Barba’s husband, Francisco de la Cruz, appeared at the door to López Beata’s house and shouted inside, calling López Beata and

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the other women present ‘‘whores,’’ among other insults.∫Ω Did he or anyone else truly believe that López Beata was a whore, or that the other women inside, who seem to have had nothing to do with the dispute, were also? Or was it simply the case that in an argument about flour, de la Cruz chose the most damning insult he could think of ? In the rhetoric of honor, sexual impurity was so powerful that people employed the terms even when sex was not the issue in order to cause the most damage for their opponents. While words such as thief, Jew, cuckold, and whore constituted a repertoire of stock insults that might be used in any occasion, Yébenes residents were also fully capable of discrediting their enemies by making very specific allegations that carefully addressed particular circumstances. This slander could be as simple as repeating malicious gossip, as Lic. Juan Cid was accused of doing. Juan Anaya Majano accused him of saying publicly in the plaza that Anaya Majano and his wife, Catalina García, had been jailed in Toledo for putting horse fat in the candles they sold. Anaya Majano claimed that Cid had repeated the claim ‘‘in order to defame and injure them’’; Cid’s defense was that he was merely repeating what he had heard said by others publicly in the town. Cid mentioned the allegation ‘‘simply and without passion’’ as one witness put it, seeking to support Cid’s claim that he was only saying what he thought was true, not spreading rumors maliciously.Ω≠ More often, allegations arose from the context of a specific dispute. In 1614, for example, Juan Durango, a shoemaker, complained that his neighbor and fellow shoemaker Pedro Loçano came to his house trying to sell Durango some leather. Durango refused to meet his price, and Loçano responded by insulting Durango’s competence as an artisan, saying, ‘‘If you will not give more than twelve reales for the leather, you do not understand the business of a shoemaker.’’Ω∞ A similar confrontation, this time revolving around one’s behavior in o≈ce, occurred in the same year when it came to the attention of the fiel del juzgado that Juan Martín Guerrero, an alcalde, had ordered that four hundred reales sent from the Indies be deposited with Baltasar Anaya, apparently to safeguard for a minor to whom the money belonged. According to one witness, Pedro López de Orgaz, a scribe in Yébenes, approached the alcalde and said that the money should have been given to him as the youth’s guardian, adding that ‘‘it is not correct nor well done, and that I will bring it up with the fiel

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del juzgado because what you, sir, have done is not just.’’ Martín Guerrero responded by arresting López de Orgaz and keeping him in jail for a few days. Both the original misallocation of the funds and the arrest of López de Orgaz did in fact draw the attention of the fiel del juzgado, who investigated and eventually fined Martín Guerrero two hundred maravedís (a maravedí was a unit of account—not an actual coin but a way to fix a price on something).Ω≤ The insults catalogued here served two purposes. First, they communicated information about the character and deeds of the insulter’s opponent, both to the opponent and to witnesses. This was especially the case with specific insults, as when Juan Cid repeated the story of how Juan Anaya Majano and his wife were arrested for selling candles fraudulently. Second, by expressing a low opinion of the target’s character, the insults assaulted his or her public reputation. Reputation was, by definition, the opinion that others had of one’s character, so merely to defame another’s character was to deliver a blow to his or her reputation. This was true no matter how inarticulate the insult was, such as the common and somewhat vague bellaco, or how obviously untrue and impulsively uttered the allegation was, such as Jew or whore. As in the elite duels, these insulting statements served as intentional a√ronts, challenging the recipient and inviting a response, and all insults communicated at least this minimal message. That the factual, detailed allegations leveled against Yébenes residents were taken seriously is supported by the attempts of so many of the victims to disprove the statements through the criminal justice system, bringing suit against their opponents, calling witnesses who would vouch for their good character and the untruth of the slander, and trusting in the justicia of Yébenes and the fiel del juzgado to support their case. That the primary function of insults was to register an intentional a√ront is shown by the fact that in so many cases the exact words spoken were not recorded by the judicial authorities, who simply summarized them instead as palabras feas, meaning ‘‘ugly words’’; palabras injuriosas, ‘‘insulting words’’; palabras de pesadumbre, ‘‘grievous words’’; or palabras descompuestas, ‘‘angry words.’’ The importance of scorn in the art of composing insults is also suggested by the fact that in so many cases, opponents threw out every insulting term that came to mind. Consider the case above of the a√ronted servant Juan de Quiñones, who was called ‘‘an infamous bellaco

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and a thief, a Jew and the son of a Jew’’—it seems unlikely that Quiñones was truly all of these things.Ω≥ Whether accurate or simply intended to wound, verbal assaults made up a great deal of the rhetoric of honor, providing a widely understood repertoire for assaulting someone’s reputation and also for conveying detailed information about transgressions he or she had committed. The Good Friday Pardons show that these insults were common and had well-understood meaning not just in Yébenes but throughout Castile. In the village of Villanueva de los Infantes in La Mancha, for example, Juan Dorado, a blacksmith, was pardoned for having killed Alonso Monge in 1625. Witnesses reported that Monge’s wife, María de Zúniga, had been in the street one afternoon saying that Dorado had called her husband a Jew; that Dorado was a liar, because Monge was a good Christian; and that Dorado was a cuckold. Later that night the witnesses heard a fight outside in the street. When they rushed out, they found Dorado and Monge fighting with swords, with Monge calling Dorado a cuckold and Dorado calling Monge a Jew. Dorado killed Monge and fled.Ω∂ Whether or not these insults referred to the true characters of the two men, they were powerful enough to lead to a man’s death. Also similar to Yébenes, other disputes involved a√ronts that conveyed more specific information about the character of the opponents. In an unrecorded location in 1625, a witness reported that Martín López had returned to his house with a cart full of firewood and was unloading it when he complained to his mother, Inés López, that a cow had been wandering about and destroying some turnips. At that moment Juana Díaz walked past, and Inés López said that the cow belonged to Díaz but she did not want to watch it. Martín López added that ‘‘he would give the cow to the devil, and he would do it to its master and mistress and all their race.’’ Díaz accused them of being shameless and went home, but subsequently her husband, Francisco Díaz, and her brother Francisco Sánchez returned with cudgels in their hands. Sánchez demanded that Martín López ‘‘come here because you were not courteous to my sister.’’ López replied that he had not said anything bad to Juana Díaz, but the two men gave him a beating that led to his death.Ω∑ Here the dispute hinged on a lack of neighborliness, with Juana Díaz accused of not watching her livestock and thereby causing damage to her neighbors’ crops and Martín López accused of not treating Díaz with respect. Jew, Moor, thief, cuckold, bellaco, and all the other stan-

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dard insults in Yébenes were found elsewhere, and throughout Castile the rhetoric of honor was flexible enough to handle all sorts of disagreements and a√ronts, even those caused by a cow eating someone’s turnips. Threats were the ultimate example of verbal a√ronts designed to challenge one’s opponent. Threats could be a reaction to a provocation made by another, as in the case between Alonso Cordovés and Juan Cid in 1623 in Yébenes. Cid, a lawyer and a Familiar of the Holy O≈ce of the Inquisition, testified that Cordovés accosted him in the street to ask him about his relations with María Cid. Cid brushed him aside, telling Cordovés it was none of his business since María Cid was his niece and he was her tutor. Cordovés allegedly responded by saying that ‘‘he would score [Cid’s] face and cut his ears.’’Ω∏ Or threats could be a way to instigate a confrontation, as Juan Nieto (the cartwright who attacked the schoolteacher in the example above) and his son Mateo did in 1612, according to Gaspar Rodríguez, a butcher. The father and son appeared at Rodríguez’s door, with Juan Nieto holding a sword under his arm and his son carrying rocks. Juan Nieto called to Rodríguez, ‘‘Come out here, chicken, why do you lock yourself in?’’ while Mateo threw three rocks at the house. (It was two days later that Nieto’s wife, María Camacha, confronted Gaspar Rodríguez’s wife to tell her that Nieto was better than Rodríguez, in the example above.)Ωπ A threat could also be simply an act of defiance, as Catalina García surely intended when, during an argument over where her neighbor Andrés de Ortega could put his cart, she told him that if she were a man rather than a woman, she would slap him, according to Ortega’s complaint.Ω∫ Regardless of the unlikelihood of Juan Cordovés actually cutting up Juan Cid’s face and ears, and the impossibility, as she saw it, of Catalina García slapping Andrés de Ortega, their statements were provocations ‘‘wholly against [their opponents’] honor,’’ as Ortega put it in his complaint against García.ΩΩ Threats issued a challenge to one’s opponent similar to the challenge to fight issued before an elite duel, which was almost exactly what Juan Nieto was doing when he told Gaspar Rodríguez to come out of his house. Like insults, threats were words that communicated information to and about one’s opponent, and the act of delivering a threat was a strategic move in the popular duel’s patterns of challenge and counterchallenge. Threats also formed a bridge between words and deeds. Just as statements could be seen as actions, provoking an opponent into violence or

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recourse to the judicial authorities, actions were also a means of communication. There was a fully stocked battery of gestures that could serve as a√ronts and make a statement about the character of one’s opponent. In the example that opened this chapter, the scribes were careful to record that although the hammer thrown by the constable Eugenio Pérez Oliva failed to hit its intended target, it did knock the hat o√ of a third party, Miguel Domínguez. Removing another man’s hat, considered an extension of the head, was a symbol of disrespect in the vocabulary of gesture that early modern Castilians employed in their confrontations.∞≠≠ Certain parts of the body, including the head, had heightened importance in the rhetoric of honor because they were seen as metaphors for the person. Blows and other encroachments on these important physical symbols of status and identity took on a meaning greater than that of merely encroaching on one’s person. A bofetón, a slap or blow to the face, especially one that was given a mano abierto, with an open hand, was the most common gesture of scorn and was the surest way to a√ront one’s opponent, just as it was for nobles in dueling manuals.∞≠∞ The face and its appendages, including hats, beards, and mustaches, were highly susceptible to a√ront, probably because they so visibly represented the identity of the people to whom they belonged. This explains why Pedro García lunged for his opponent and started a brawl after Antonio Rodríguez threatened to ‘‘pull his mustache’’ during an argument over a card game in 1620.∞≠≤ A person’s identity extended outward from the body in other ways as well. In 1627, for example, when Juan de Villareal touched the cape of Juan Rubio Herrero as they passed on the street, Rubio Herrero turned around to confront him, and as a response Villareal cut Rubio Herrero in the neck.∞≠≥ And in that same year, María López called María García a ‘‘ruined woman’’ and declared that she was an ‘‘amancebada’’ after García spilled water on López’s skirt, according to a complaint by García’s husband.∞≠∂ Possessions could also serve as an extension of the self and hence a target for gestures of disrespect. The house was an especially prominent symbol of identity, vulnerable to ‘‘house-scorning,’’ a ritual of contempt that involved burning, breaking, or otherwise defacing the door to someone’s house, perpetrated usually at night by a group of people eager to publicly humiliate an opponent.∞≠∑ Juan Ortiz complained that his door had been beaten and burned one night in 1620. His daughter Quiteria

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García told o≈cials that she thought it was done as a reprisal by Diego Martín de las Mendio and Gerónimo, the son of Alonso Barba de Gaspar, because she had teased them earlier and they were displeased with her.∞≠∏ Similarly, in 1611 Pedro Martín Luengo testified that one night at midnight he had chanced upon four men starting a fire by the door of Lic. Domingo Múnoz de Guzmán. The men engaged in the shaming ritual warned Martín Luengo not to tell anyone what he had seen, and two unknown men attacked him with a dagger later when he went to tell an alcalde.∞≠π Door-burning, although rare, seems to have been a well-known procedure that was carried out with planning and determination. An opponent could be shamed through his or her house in more mundane ways as well, by someone breaking down the door or merely throwing rocks and shouting at the building, as Juan and Mateo Nieto did in the above example from 1612, demanding that Gaspar Rodríguez come out and calling him a ‘‘chicken.’’∞≠∫ Beyond one’s house, other possessions that could stand in for the self included dogs, who sometimes found themselves the target of thrown rocks, and the vara de justicia, the rod or sta√ that alcaldes and constables carried with them to identify themselves as o≈cers of the law. One of the most potent expressions of defiance toward the authorities that people could make was to seize the vara, knock it down, or even break it. This gesture expressed contempt for the o≈cial carrying the vara and signified when one felt that the o≈cial’s actions were not at all just. In 1635, for example, a witness reported that Diego de Balboa complained about the high prices of sardines in the market. When the alderman Alonso Rubio overheard him and commanded him to ‘‘speak well,’’ Balboa retorted that Rubio should speak well. Rubio sought to have Balboa arrested, but when a constable tried to apprehend him, Balboa seized his vara and broke it.∞≠Ω Gestures might also take on sexual overtones. Witnesses stated that María López, the woman in the above example from 1628 who was accused of calling Pedro Martín ‘‘bellaco cuckold,’’ punctuated her statement by throwing a horn at him, the well-known symbol of cuckoldry throughout the Mediterranean (then and now).∞∞≠ Horn throwing aside, sexually charged gestures more often focused on women’s bodies. Sometimes sexual play could be interpreted by others as o√ensive, as a group of teenage males found out in 1612 when they were brought up on criminal charges for pinching some young women, somewhat older than the boys,

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who were going to fetch water at sundown.∞∞∞ In a similar case, a witness explained that Antón, a slave belonging to the priest Maestro Parraga, was playing with María del Prado during the vigil of the cofradía of San Bartolomé de la Nava (a religious confraternity) in 1622. Antón attempted to remove her apron while she tried to knock o√ his hat. Arriving on the scene, del Prado’s sixteen-year-old son Marcos López did not view their play benignly, and he struck Antón twice.∞∞≤ Of course, the most powerful sexual gestures that could be used to shame women’s bodies were seduction and rape, of which there were a few cases from Yébenes during the period studied.∞∞≥ Early modern Castilians also employed gestures to impart detailed information, just as they used words in threats and insults. The most common gesture that implied threat was meter mano a la espada (to put one’s hand on one’s sword or dagger). Doing so indicated a willingness to use violence against one’s opponent, as did brandishing an espada desnuda (unsheathed sword, dagger, or knife), an even more menacing gesture because in this case the weapon was ready for use. When Juan Nieto called for Gaspar Rodríguez to ‘‘come out here, chicken,’’ in the above example, the sword tucked under his arm confirmed that it was not a friendly invitation.∞∞∂ Holding stones or a palo (a rod or cudgel) also symbolized a readiness to inflict violence. Like verbal insults, gestures could also communicate scorn. When Lucía Gómez claimed that Gabriel García had whipped and beat her while ejecting her from his mother’s house in 1611, she identified whipping as a particularly shameful form of punishment, one normally used on animals.∞∞∑ Blocking someone’s way was another gesture that indicated scorn, as in the case involving Bartolomé de Azeña, whose father complained in 1626 that a group of young men tormented him by always teasing or mocking him, beating him, and gesturing at him with a finger on the tongue. Finally they hit him with a crutch (possibly his own) after he laughed at them when they tried to block his way into Mass.∞∞∏ Blocking someone’s way was a common provocation, intimidating one’s opponent and communicating a sense of superiority as clearly as frank statements such as, ‘‘My husband is better and more honorable than yours.’’ The way that status was associated with the body was evident in a confrontation, recounted by a witness, during which Gabriel Gómez told Juan Martín Guerrero that he was as good as him, to which Martín Guerrero replied that Gómez was not as good as his

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shoe.∞∞π Both the posterior and the foot were associated with filth and were used insultingly in comparison with one’s opponent, while the head and face, the prestigious parts of the body, were the target of attacks.∞∞∫ Just as with verbal insults, the Good Friday Pardons reveal that gestures too carried widely understood meanings throughout Castile. While gambling in Madrid in 1637, Antonio de la Calle rose from his seat to let a priest sit. The clergyman declined, but Don Francisco de Rojas saw the empty chair and sat down. A√ronted by the way de Rojas took advantage of his polite act, de la Calle threw o√ his cape and went out into the street. De Rojas followed him, and the two men drew their swords and exchanged words. Then they fought, and de la Calle was killed.∞∞Ω Taking o√ the cape was recognized by the two opponents and all who saw them as an invitation to fight, just like drawing swords. Gestures involving capes, hats, collars, swords, beards, mustaches, and fingers to the tongue or mouth—all of these and more appeared in the pardons and had a provocative meaning that was clear to all. Once a confrontation began, the words and gestures of a√ront could quickly cause the confrontation to escalate in seriousness. Words often led to blows, just as one would expect from symbols communicating provocation and threat. In the first example in this chapter, a dispute about a debt between Gómez de Montemayor and the constable Pérez Oliva led first to giving the lie and then to a violent action: Pérez Oliva throwing a hammer at Gómez de Montemayor.∞≤≠ Similarly, in 1609 a fight developed when the sacristan Francisco Corral, the Toledo silversmith Geronymo Mexia, and some other friends passed by the door of the innkeeper Alonso Carrasco, where the tanners Juan Martín and Francisco López de Azeña were standing among friends, blocking the way. Corral explained to the justicia that as he and his friends passed, his cape brushed against López de Azeña. López de Azeña responded by pushing Corral and saying, ‘‘The devil help you, the street is not full.’’ The sacristan first attempted to apologize (or so he claimed), and it seemed as though López de Azeña and Martín were going to accept his apology and go away peaceably. Then Mexia demanded that the tanners remove their hats, reigniting the confrontation. Angry words were exchanged, and the sacristan gave the lie to López de Azeña. The men put their hands on their swords, drew them, and fought, leaving Juan Martín’s arm badly cut.∞≤∞ As in the formal duel, an a√ront led first to an exchange of words, a challenge by drawing the sword, then combat, with

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the opponents employing words and gestures along the way to signal their intentions. Fighting often provided the climax of a confrontation, but like the elite authors of dueling manuals, the judicial authorities tended to expend less ink describing the actual combat than they did on the verbal and gestural posturing that preceded, and often accompanied, the fighting. Terms such as herida (a wound), herir (to strike or wound), cuchilladas (slashes with a knife, dagger, or sword), descalabrar (to smash one’s head), and dar palos (to strike with rods or sticks) all summarized the action of assault in a way understandable to bystanders and judicial o≈cials alike, but without giving much detail about the physical damage done. Sometimes the criminal process recorded a simple assault with no explanation of the context and no indication that the confrontation had escalated from one a√ront to another until physical action was taken. In these cases, the o≈cials simply recorded that a pesadumbre (quarrel) or quistión (dispute) had taken place, or that the opponents had reñido (fought). These terms encompassed verbal and gestural exchanges as well as actual physical violence. Judicial o≈cials desired above all to restore order and punish lawbreakers and did not go into more context than was necessary for them to understand what had happened and apportion blame, so it is unclear from these terse reports of a pesadumbre or quistión whether the fight actually did erupt out of the blue, without any background or context to explain how it developed, or whether this context simply did not make it into the written record.∞≤≤ Victims of assault who complained to the justicia often did claim that they had been attacked for no reason, but we cannot take these statements at face value because such victims had every reason to conceal any provocation of their own toward their assailants, thereby encouraging the judicial o≈cials to punish their attackers but not themselves. In 1614 Francisco Gómez complained that Juan Serrano approached him as Gómez was bringing a cart full of straw to another man’s house and ‘‘without having provoked him nor without him having said a word’’—a phrase used often by those making complaints—punched him in the face until others intervened.∞≤≥ Other cases shed even less light on the context of the assault. In 1615 a man attacked Bartolomé de Morales as he was walking behind a church at night. After being cut on the head with a knife, de Morales managed to draw his sword and chase his assailant away, but neither he nor other witnesses recognized the man with the

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knife.∞≤∂ Perhaps some of these assaults were simply anonymous attempts to rob the victim with no real connection to interpersonal conflict. Despite the lack of detailed description in the reports, meaning could often still be discerned in the combat. Physical violence and its aftermath provided symbols—both physical and nonphysical—that communicated information to disputants and witnesses. The weapons used during combat, for example, testified to the nature of the violence. Swords, daggers, and knives were ubiquitous among the men in Yébenes—men of all ranks seemed to carry these weapons as a matter of course. Even the loweststatus men in Yébenes had access to swords: Antón, the slave who was struck by the son of María del Prado while playfully trying to undo her apron in 1622, got into trouble again five years later when he was accused of ambushing Blas Ruiz behind the chapel of Nuestra Señora del Rosario with a sword and wounding him in the head.∞≤∑ Firearms, by contrast, were illegal and rare. They were used infrequently in disputes, and men could be prosecuted criminally merely for bearing pistols, arquebuses, and shotguns (escopetas). Swords seem to have been illicit only at night, and there were a few cases where constables discovered men carrying swords at night and confiscated them. Such powerful weapons were associated with men only. Instead of swords and daggers, women used cudgels, stones, or whatever happened to be at hand when they wanted to inflict physical harm, including such items as plates and tools. Sometimes they even resorted to biting. Men also employed anything handy when they were not armed with a sword, knife, or dagger (although in the sources I consulted there is no example of a man biting his opponent), and men especially used stones in combat. The relative physical weakness of women can only partly explain their unwillingness to use actual weapons in violent disputes since they used knives in their work every day and one would imagine they would be proficient enough to employ them even against stronger men, and certainly against other women. The physical tools of violence and the way they were used spoke to the relationship between the two opponents. A fight with cape and sword symbolized a kind of equality between two men, especially if they were engaged in a popular duel. Alternatively, the choice of weapons could point to a gulf in power or status. In 1624 Alonso del Villa complained to the justicia that Alonso Gil came to del Villa’s house to collect a debt and found his wife, María Prieta, alone with their small daughter. Gil returned

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that night and broke down the door. Prieta picked up her husband’s sword and said to him, ‘‘Bellaco thief who has entered my house, you are unlucky for I am an honorable woman and will take this sword and leave you with stab wounds.’’ Gil responded, ‘‘Pardon me, señora María Prieta, I did not want to do this,’’ and snu√ed out the candle. He then wrestled the sword away from her and tried to tie her up, but Prieta bit him on the hand and managed to escape and get help. Meanwhile Gil took some of her and her husband’s belongings, presumably as compensation for the debt that del Villa owed him or as leverage to force him to pay.∞≤∏ Prieta’s choice of weapons pointed to desperation on her part, since she would normally never have used a sword and was reduced in the end to biting like an animal. Choice of weapons could also signify an assertion of superiority, especially when they inflicted more shame than they did actual harm. The bofetón was more symbolically damaging than physically harmful, as it demonstrated that the assailant did not fear retaliation from his or her opponent, whom the assailant had to approach closely in order to strike. Pulling a beard or mustache sent a similar signal. Cudgeling and whipping were other ways to deliver a blow whose symbolic meaning of disrespect and provocation was more important than actual physical harm, both in the elite dueling literature and in Yébenes. Wounds were another important symbol for witnesses of violent conflict to interpret. Judicial o≈cials paid close attention to the physical harm done to victims of violence, and participants likewise were careful to report it, albeit often in stock phrases. Whether or not the skin had been broken, and whether blood was shed, were important details that observers and the justicia wanted to know in each case. Hearing about a wounded person recovering in bed was often a trigger for an investigation. Witnessing the blow that caused the wound was important too, because sometimes defendants in criminal cases tried to escape culpability by stating that although he or she had indeed had an encounter with the wounded person, the wound was not a result of their confrontation and must have come from some other cause. Surgeons routinely testified in criminal investigations after inspecting wounds to give their opinion as to what type of weapon or blow had caused the damage. Witnesses were necessary to judge whether the wound resulted from the fight or from a separate incident, and those sworn in during investigations were careful to say whether they saw the suspect inflict the wound, did not see it, or did

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not see it happen but later heard who was responsible. In the rare cases where death occurred, the surgeon was again called out to determine whether the deceased died from wounds inflicted in the confrontation or from another cause. Physical evidence of humiliation, such as Miguel Domínguez’s hat lying on the floor after being struck by Eugenio Pérez Oliva’s hammer, were also carefully noted by witnesses and o≈cials.∞≤π Witnesses and the judicial o≈cials were also sensitive to emotions during episodes of physical violence. The intentions of combatants were an important element of the narratives of confrontation, and they were thought to be readable by the combatants’ emotions and actions. Premeditated assaults were judged to be more serious than assaults that occurred in a context of high emotions during a confrontation. Caso de pensivo and caso pensado were the phrases witnesses used to indicate premeditation, as when, according to the testimony of Francisco Ximénez, Martín Fernández Barbero went to his house to fetch a knife after Ximénez called him a shameless pícaro in 1633. Fernández Barbero returned and stabbed Ximénez, an action that Ximénez called a ‘‘caso penssado.’’ Apparently the alcalde investigating the case agreed, using the same language to describe the attack as premeditated when he drew up the heading to the investigation.∞≤∫ Witnesses and authorities had other stock phrases to denote disputants’ state of mind, for example describing an assailant as displaying mucha colera (great rage), ánimo diabolico (demonic intent), or ánimo de matar (intent to kill). Domingo Algueta accused Francisco Ruiz, his brother Juan Martín, and their servant of attacking him during a dispute they had over whose flock of sheep should pass before the other’s in 1634. Algueta said that they attacked him with stones and truncheons and would have killed him. Algueta’s companion, Juan Gómez, agreed, saying that if he had not been there to help, there would have been an ‘‘unfortunate incident.’’∞≤Ω Indeed, it was a common trope of criminal complaints to maintain that ‘‘if someone had not intervened’’ or ‘‘if I had not escaped,’’ the assailant would have killed the victim. The meanings attached to all of these various a√ronts, gestures, weapons, and wounds show that even though the townsmen of Yébenes did not have trumpeters and drummers to accompany their challenges, as Paris de Puteo wanted, or ambassadors shuttling between Madrid and Paris, as with the proposed duel between Charles V and Francis I, the essential logic of violent confrontation was identical to that of the formal duel: to

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signal one’s opinion about one’s own worth and one’s opponent’s disgrace through symbols that were inherent in the preliminaries to combat —in other words, to use the rhetoric of honor. The opposite of ‘‘with the intent to kill’’ was con gran cortesía, ‘‘with great politeness or courtesy,’’ and participants repeated this phrase when they described confrontations as evidence that they did not intend to hurt anyone or, indeed, to quarrel at all. This behavior was another symbol displayed by participants in confrontation, one that pushed the blame for the violence firmly onto one’s opponent. The malleability of the evidence surrounding intention and emotions is revealed in the 1628 example of Bartolomé Ximénez Majero. Ximénez Majero was accused of approaching the alcalde Francisco de Ayala Nieto, who was speaking to others, and angrily saying that the alcalde had been remiss in his duties by not paying him three hundred reales, and that ‘‘if my parents were alive he would not hold the vara de justicia.’’ Ximénez Majero admitted having said those things, but claimed he did so with ‘‘courtesy’’ and ‘‘respect’’ and with his hat o√, implying that he was merely beseeching the alcalde to act, not delivering an intentional a√ront.∞≥≠ Although the distinction between courtesy and a√ront could sometimes be a fine one, as in this example, it did exist, and this distinction was important. In fact, Covarrubias defined honra as ‘‘the reverence and courtesy that is made to virtue, and to power.’’∞≥∞ The option to use courtesy demonstrates that once confrontations began, escalation toward violence was not the only possible course. Golden Age honor plays, and to a great extent dueling manuals, suggest that once an a√ront has been given, strict rules of behavior locked opponents into a ritual exchange of provocation that led inexorably to violence even if they wished to avoid it. Actual behavior, as recorded in the criminal archives, shows that alongside the vocabulary of gestures and words that signaled a√ront and challenge, there was also a vocabulary of reconciliation. First of all, people who perceived an a√ront had recourse to the criminal justice system. When Mateo Pérez called Bartolomé Barba a thief and a false witness in 1613, Barba did not respond with an assault, threat, or insult against his accuser but instead went to the alcalde and got him to open a criminal investigation.∞≥≤ There are many more examples of people whose response to a√ront was not to take the bait and lash out at the provocation but instead to complain to the alcaldes. Even in the realm of lineage and sexual purity, the matters that anthropologists and histo-

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rians maintain to be the most sensitive to Mediterranean peoples, aggrieved parties had the option of bringing their case to the justicia. The examples found in the archives of men making criminal complaints when called a Jew or Moor show that violent revenge was not the only acceptable response to slander against one’s blood purity.∞≥≥ Similarly, when María López threw a horn at Pedro Martín and called him ‘‘bellaco cuckold,’’ Martín did not attack, threaten, or insult her but instead took his case to the alcalde.∞≥∂ And after Alonso Gil broke into the house of María Prieta and attempted to rape her, her husband, Alonso del Villa, did not seek violent revenge against her assailant but instead complained to the justicia.∞≥∑ The convention of the Golden Age stage demanded that men respond with violence against even the suggestion that their wives or daughters had been shamed sexually, but the criminal cases from Yébenes show that, in actuality, a violent response was not necessary. Apparently, they could take their case to the criminal justice system without any loss of honor. Even as confrontations developed, there were a number of tactics available for avoiding violence. Fleeing and ignoring a provocation were the two most direct ways to avoid an escalation. Bartolomé de Azeña, the young man whose way into Mass was blocked by other youths who were accustomed to teasing him, first attempted to ignore their a√ront by laughing at their insults. Then when Alonso Marín struck him with a crutch, he responded by walking away. Josefe Rodríguez, a friend of Azeña’s who was called to give a deposition in the case, explained Azeña’s withdrawal by saying that he was a ‘‘very composed young man not given to fighting.’’∞≥∏ In another instance from 1614, Agustín Carpio, a constable, complained that he had arrested Juan Ximénez and was detaining him when the prisoner’s brother, Bartolomé Ximénez, arrived with a drawn sword. Juan Ximénez also drew his dagger, threatening to kill the constable and saying that ‘‘if [Bartolomé] wanted to kill you he could very well do it.’’ In response, Carpio chose to withdraw and let Ximénez go.∞≥π Another common move was simply to try to calm one’s opponent. Using courteous language and even taking o√ one’s hat was a way to show one’s nonviolent intentions while engaging in a dispute. Simply stating, ‘‘I do not want to fight with you,’’ was another blunt way to try to defuse a situation. When Pedro Loçano accused Juan Durango of not understanding the shoemaker business after Durango refused to meet his price for

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some leather, Durango related that Loçano angrily called him a ‘‘vujarón’’ (sodomite) and told him that ‘‘if he [Durango] were a man, he [Loçano] would wait for him [i.e., to fight] wherever and however he wanted.’’ Durango responded, ‘‘I do not want to fight, go with God,’’ and refused the invitation.∞≥∫ ‘‘Go with God’’ (vayase con dios) was a phrase used often to ask someone to leave, and it could signify either a polite goodbye or a rude dismissal. According to a witness, when Tomás Ruiz entered the main plaza of Yébenes one day in 1615 with an unsheathed sword, telling Pedro Bermejo, ‘‘the Indian,’’ to pay him his money, Bermejo responded by drawing his own sword while telling Ruiz to ‘‘go with God,’’ signaling that although he did not wish to fight, he was prepared to do so.∞≥Ω Warnings such as these were common, sometimes o√ering one’s opponent the choice between defusing the situation and escalating into violence. A witness reported that when Mateo Pérez Oliva complained in a tavern in 1624 that the priest of Yébenes served only strangers, not him or other people of Yébenes, Bartolomé Ximénez came to the priest’s defense, asking Pérez Oliva to repeat what he had said. Pérez Oliva responded that he had said the priest works only for ‘‘bellacos’’ and not for him, and Ximénez responded, ‘‘Well, who are these bellacos?’’ Pérez Oliva had implied that the priest’s friends were bellacos, but Ximénez chose not to take that as an a√ront and gave his opponent the chance to back down from confrontation. Pérez Oliva declined that opportunity, however, and shot back, ‘‘You are the first [among the bellacos],’’ to which Ximénez responded by punching him in the face, and they went into the street to brawl.∞∂≠ In a similar confrontation that same year, Juan Martín Guerrero made a statement that his opponent could choose to interpret as giving the lie or as a neutral statement. According to a witness, Gabriel Gómez was complaining about the way the sales tax (alcabala) was administered in Yébenes, claiming that he had to pay more than he should, and Martín Guerrero, who was apparently a friend of the tax collector’s, said that ‘‘whoever said the tax was poorly collected lied.’’ Gómez chose to escalate the confrontation, replying that Martín Guerrero lied more and adding, ‘‘I am as good as you.’’ Martín Guerrero retorted that Gómez was ‘‘not as good as his shoe.’’∞∂∞ Not all attempts to calm an opponent were as subtle as these statements that might or might not be interpreted as a√ronts. María Fernández told the investigating authorities that when Marcos de la Torre

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seized her while she was going to Mass on San Andrés’s day in 1628, pulled her into his house, and beat her, she pleaded with him, asking, ‘‘Señor Marcos de la Torre, how have I o√ended you?’’ All she could do was utter a helpless plea for mercy (although she did manage to escape).∞∂≤ Even a violent or insulting response, if properly calibrated, could represent restraint. Eugenio Pérez Oliva threw a hammer at Francisco Gómez de Montemayor rather than unsheathing the more dangerous and provocative sword that he was probably carrying as he performed his duties as constable.∞∂≥ One could say that whenever someone who was engaged in a violent confrontation chose words over an assault, or chose fists or cudgels over swords, knives, and daggers, he was forsaking greater violence in favor of a less provocative action. This restraint is in contrast to the honor code of the playwrights and dueling-manual writers, where it was assumed that one would inflict the maximum amount of violence, even lethal force, once a confrontation escalated. Bystanders witnessing the beginning of a confrontation also tried often to calm the two disputants and, in their words, ‘‘make peace’’ ( poner en paz). According to witnesses, the confrontation between Pérez Oliva and Gómez de Montemayor ended when bystanders ‘‘made peace between them,’’ and the confrontation between Martín Guerrero and Gómez about the sales tax did not come to fighting because witnesses stopped them after they had spoken about lying and whether Gómez was as good as Martín Guerrero’s shoe.∞∂∂ It is not clear how exactly onlookers were supposed to stop a violent confrontation, since witnesses rarely gave any more detail beyond the simple phrase, ‘‘make peace.’’ The one method of making peace that was frequently stipulated was for one or more people to rush into the space between the two opponents, as evidenced by witnesses who substituted a description of ‘‘going between’’ (estando de por medio) the opponents for the phrase ‘‘make peace.’’ Miguel Domínguez had his hat knocked o√ by the hammer thrown by Eugenio Pérez Oliva because he had interposed himself between Pérez Oliva and Gómez de Montemayor, trying to stop the fight.∞∂∑ Sometimes just chastising the quarrelsome party could dampen the conflict, as in 1623 when Luis, a young servant of the barber Juan Bautista, called Diego Martín, Bautista’s apprentice, ‘‘the son of a hangman,’’ only to be told by the adults present not to say such things.∞∂∏ Timely action could also help prevent a confrontation before it started,

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as in 1614 when Pedro Peña, a surgeon, explained to the justicia that he had spotted Juan Martín de Sandobal with a shotgun under his arm and asked him where he was going. The surgeon knew that just previously Martín de Sandobal had argued with Blas Ribero, who had thrown a rock at him and hit him, and Sandobal had gone home to fetch the weapon. After Peña stopped him, however, Martín de Sandobal said, ‘‘Leave me alone, your grace, for I am not doing anything,’’ and returned home.∞∂π Or once violence began, witnesses could go for outside help, as in 1632 when the friends of Nicolas Díaz and Luis García went to get the justicia to make peace rather than try to intervene themselves after García splashed Díaz in the face with water. It was actually an alderman from the San Juan section of Yébenes who arrived to stop the brawl.∞∂∫ Sometimes victims were rescued from an assault by bystanders, as in 1628 when María Rodríguez followed Catalina Cid into her house with a weapon and beat her on the head with it until those present could seize Rodríguez and pull her away.∞∂Ω More often, all witnesses could do was help the victim after the assault was over. This is not to say that witnesses’ attempts to calm a violent situation always worked. When Luis, the servant of Juan Bautista, was told not to call Diego Martín ‘‘the son of a hangman,’’ he was unrepentant and allegedly replied that ‘‘if it has been said one time it would be said another three times, and if thrice it would be said another three hundred times, and it would be proven.’’∞∑≠ In 1612 Andrés Pérez heard that Juan Miguel and Eugenio Díaz had exchanged angry words and had challenged one another to a duel. Pérez was able to make peace between them by going to Eugenio Díaz and inducing him to ‘‘take the hand of friendship’’ (tomo la mano de amigos) with him, a ritual that was commonly used to formally end disputes. He then left Díaz, found Juan Miguel, and did the same with him, which should have put an end to the conflict and ended the threat that they would fight. After leaving Miguel, however, Pérez heard that he resumed his argument with Díaz, ‘‘not keeping the reconciliation.’’ Pérez sought Miguel out again, in order to ‘‘see them made friends,’’ and asked him why he would resume the quarrel after having made peace, but the conversation was interrupted by a constable coming to arrest the recalcitrant Miguel.∞∑∞ Despite all his e√orts, Pérez could not settle the conflict between his two friends. There are other cases where one person thought a dispute was seemingly settled, only to have another resume the conflict. In 1626

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Gabriel Guerrero, the son of a surgeon and apprenticing to be a surgeon himself, reported to the authorities that he was on his way to the nearby village of Marjaliza when he met up with Juan de Ballesteros on the road near a windmill. They rode together and chatted for awhile, then Ballesteros told Guerrero to dismount from his ride, which he did. ‘‘Gabriel,’’ said Ballesteros, ‘‘the things that were said last night were not well said.’’ Guerrero replied that they were, and Ballesteros challenged him to fight. Whatever words had passed between them the night before, Guerrero thought the issue had been settled, while Ballesteros wanted to bring the issue up again and reignite a confrontation. Indeed, he allegedly attacked Guerrero later with a sword.∞∑≤ Sometimes bystanders only made things worse. In 1627 a witness reported that Juan Serrano and Francisco López Delgado had met in the jurisdiction of Yébenes of the Order of San Juan to fight a duel. López Delgado’s father, Pedro López, heard of their confrontation and arrived to make peace between his son and his opponent, but a scu∆e broke out in which at least seven men were involved, and Serrano ended up on the ground, wounded. López Delgado’s brother, also named Pedro, said he drew his sword only to protect his father. Three other entrants in the fight claimed that they were only trying to make peace, not take a side, and one of them also received a wound on the hand. What began as combat between two men turned into a general melee as reconciliation broke down and witnesses joined the fray.∞∑≥ In another example a year later, Alonso Ruiz was accused of arriving on a scene where Juan Guindas Fernández and Agustín Carpio were fighting. Instead of making peace, Ruiz allegedly began helping Carpio, stabbing Guindas Fernández with a dagger.∞∑∂ Bystanders joining a fight was a common problem for constables trying to make arrests. Gaspar Ramón, a constable, and Diego Rodríguez, a scribe, approached Juan de la Puente in the plaza in 1614 to serve him notice about a debt of twelve reales he had to pay, and they encountered resistance from de la Puente. A witness described Luis and Diego García, brothers-in-law of de la Puente, arriving, seeing their kinsman facing two men in the plaza, all with hands on their swords, and rushing to help Rodríguez escape to the neighborhood of the Order of San Juan, which was out of the jurisdiction of these o≈cials from the neighborhood of Toledo. When the o≈cers of the fiel del juzgado questioned them in prison in Toledo, the García brothers claimed they did not realize that

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Ramón was a constable.∞∑∑ In fact, bystanders were under a legal obligation to help o≈cers of the justicia if they ran into trouble while trying to fulfill their duties, but again witnesses did not always help as they should. In 1628 the constable Alonso de Alfaro went to the house of Francisco Esteban Ventura to arrest him because he had attacked another constable at night. Esteban Ventura resisted with his sword and with the help of his wife (who bit de Alfaro on the hand), and managed to escape into the street. According to the constable, he twice ‘‘asked Antón Nieto,’’ who was also in the house, ‘‘to give him help,’’ but Esteban Ventura’s friend Nieto refused. In the street, the constable continued to ‘‘ask for aid to the justicia,’’ but no one responded, and Esteban Ventura escaped. His original quarry gone, the constable arrested Nieto instead. When questioned in jail in Toledo, Nieto claimed that initially, since the constable ‘‘did not ask him to be a bondsman or guarantor of anything, he moved away’’ from the confrontation. Then ‘‘when asked to help, he arrived to give it,’’ but Esteban Ventura had already escaped.∞∑∏ In other words, Nieto claimed that he avoided the confrontation at first because it was none of his business, and that when called on he did try to help, but it was too late.∞∑π The Good Friday Pardons demonstrate that these methods of escalating or calming a confrontation were not unique to Yébenes. In Ciempozuelos, for example, just south of Madrid, Juan Castaño was killed after a confrontation with Alonso de Ariñón in 1636. Residents of the village testified that Castaño had been harassing Ariñón for months, challenging him to fight and calling him a bellaco and a coward for refusing to do so. Finally one night Castaño saw Ariñón pass by in the street, went after him with his hand on his sword, and attacked, only to have Ariñón stab him in the belly in self-defense and then flee. Every time Castaño had challenged him, Ariñón had declined, telling Castaño that ‘‘he did not want to fight with him’’ and to ‘‘go with God.’’ Even Castaño, in his confession to the justicia as he lay dying, claimed that the blame for his death was all his own and begged the authorities not to prosecute Ariñón.∞∑∫ And in a case whose twists echoed somewhat the plot of The Final Duel of Spain, Don Juan de Plaza was pardoned for killing Don Juan Dorado in Badajoz in 1627. The two young men, who seem to have been soldiers stationed in the border town, had a disagreement over a woman. They settled this original dispute and became friends again, but eight or ten days later Dorado confronted de Plaza and accused him of having spread the rumor

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that Dorado had refused to meet him in a duel over the woman. The two men met in a field outside the city, where de Plaza denied the accusation. Dorado told him to draw his sword anyway, and they fought until de Plaza dealt his challenger a mortal blow.∞∑Ω By making peace originally, de Plaza, like Ariñón, had tried to dampen emotions, calm his rival, and avoid violence. Both men failed, but their e√orts to keep the peace probably helped contribute to the pardons they later received from the royal government. Reconciliation was an option chosen by men throughout Castile when threatened with violence, even soldiers who were otherwise willing to duel, such as de Plaza.

the rhetoric of honor Why did de Plaza make peace originally but then follow Dorado to a field outside the town to fight later on? Why did Castaño, seemingly so enraged with Ariñón that he risked his life attacking him, wait weeks before finally confronting him? Why try to make peace at all if honor and violence were so vital to Golden Age culture? Compare their behavior with that of Gaspar Gómez, a thirty-four-year-old native of Zaragoza and a royal coachman who, in Madrid in 1643, killed the tavern keeper Pedro Rico. In his testimony, Gómez explained that Rico had come to his house one night to challenge him to a duel over some gossip that a woman said Gómez had spread about him. Gómez told him to come back in the morning. Rico left, then returned again, and Gómez told him to ‘‘go with God.’’ The next morning Rico returned, but Gómez told him, ‘‘Go with God, your grace, for I do not want to fight with your grace over things of such little importance, and what is more we are neighbors and friends.’’ Rico responded, ‘‘I swear to Christ that he is a cuckold and a bastard if he does not want to go out with me.’’ ‘‘With these ugly words the said Pedro Rico obligated this suspect to go out and fight with him,’’ Gómez later explained. They left Madrid through one of the gates, and Gómez killed his neighbor.∞∏≠ As Gómez was explaining his behavior to the judicial authorities he may have embellished or invented the numerous times he refused to fight, but he also told them that he was ‘‘obligated’’ to fight when called a cuckold and a bastard. He expected them to believe that the insult was a mitigating circumstance, and someone in authority apparently did, since Gómez was pardoned. But did these taunts really ‘‘obligate’’ Gómez to fight? Seven years earlier, Alonso de Ariñón shrugged o√ similar insults from Juan

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Castaño just a few miles away in Ciempozuelos. Gómez was not obligated at all; he chose to fight, and he used honor as a justification for his behavior after the fact. In the hands of Golden Age playwrights, honor was something possessed by gentlemen that could be taken away by any a√ront or misdeed. The honor code was a method of safeguarding one’s honor, an inalterable law, with each a√ront sparking an inexorable march toward violence. In the hands of actual Castilians, honor was a rhetoric whose components— insults such as cuckold and bellaco, gestures such as putting a hand to a sword or burning someone’s door, acts involving parts of the body such as the beard or articles of clothing such as the cape, and phrases such as ‘‘with great courtesy’’ or ‘‘go with God’’—were symbols imbued with wellunderstood meaning that they could use to intensify or de-escalate confrontations. Gaspar Gómez might claim that certain words such as cuckold and bastard were inexcusable and had to be met with violence, but in practice each participant in a confrontation over honor had some degree of free choice in how they responded—they could choose to escalate or reconcile, to fight or go to the authorities. The rhetoric of honor provided an array of options to choose from, and individuals did the choosing for themselves. Choice was at the heart of each confrontation and at each step of the confrontation. Once a confrontation began, there was no telling how it would end—would bystanders calm the situation or inflame it? There was no rigid code of honor, no inflexible law of the duel. Instead there was a flexible procedure of dispute, incorporating a wide array of moves and countermoves, both verbal and gestural, with which early modern Castilians set about resolving disputes over reputation. In his observations on the Spanish court, the French traveler Barthélemy Joly remarked that Spaniards fought duels over many issues, but among them the ‘‘five words of Castile’’ stood out: cuckold, traitor, heretic, vagabond, and sodomite. He added Jew as another powerful invective. Clearly he was aware of a vocabulary of a√ront that was common knowledge among those he met, and he went on to outline how duels were performed as a response to these insults.∞∏∞ But despite his assertion that these terms of abuse were particularly powerful in Castile, just how ‘‘Spanish’’ was the rhetoric of honor and the way that Golden Age Castilians employed it? Some observers believed that Spaniards were extremely concerned about honor, more so than other European people. The Christian

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moralist Jerónimo Batista de Lanuza, in a sermon on loving one’s enemies, singled Spain out as a place where this virtue was especially rare thanks to the overwhelming concern about honor.∞∏≤ But dueling etiquette itself was imported from Italy, and it also appeared in other European countries as the new, private duel replaced the medieval judicial duel. Historians have traced the migration of Italian dueling forms to France and England especially.∞∏≥ The proposed duel between Charles V and Francis I is another clue that the elite duel was not so unique to Spain. Francis was French, and although Charles was the king of Castile, he grew up in the Low Countries and spent years in Germany, where he was emperor—yet both of them understood and used the rules of dueling in their diplomatic maneuvering. More surprisingly, the actions of non-elite Castilians recorded in Yébenes court records and in the Good Friday Pardons have strong parallels with the findings of historians elsewhere in Europe. Pieter Spierenburg has found that non-elite men in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Amsterdam fought popular duels over honor issues, and they adhered to a loosely organized set of customs when engaging in interpersonal violence whose rituals and logic also mirrored that of elite duels.∞∏∂ John Beattie also discovered ‘‘popular duels’’ in early modern England.∞∏∑ Susanne Pohl explains that the Stallung, or ‘‘peace bidding,’’ in fifteenth-century Zurich provided a ritual with which bystanders defused violent confrontations, and although quarrelers who were admonished to make peace were legally bound to do so, they might refuse or take it as a challenge and begin a fight with the would-be peacemaker. Stallung was meant to stop confrontations over honor, but opponents bent it to their own purposes during disputes.∞∏∏ In Italy, too, Thomas V. Cohen and Elizabeth Cohen have found that violent confrontations revolved around a flexible set of rituals and insults that the non-elite understood and employed.∞∏π The rhetoric of honor, including the rituals of the duel, also found a home in Latin America, and not just among Spanish and Portuguese descendants but among the Native Americans and Africans too.∞∏∫ Indeed, Julian Ru√ ’s survey of violence in early modern Europe describes interpersonal violence across the entire continent in terms that the people of Yébenes could well have understood: violence that broke out over seemingly petty issues became serious because honor was involved, and a set of rituals helped guide the participants in violence just as it did in elite duels. In fact, early modern Europeans ‘‘thought violence a routine part of the discourse of daily life.’’∞∏Ω Through-

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out Europe there is very little evidence about the practice—as opposed to the theory—of elite, private duels, so for all we know Batista de Lanuza was right in claiming that Spanish noblemen were especially fond of the duel. But research that focuses on the practice of violence among the non-elite suggests that Golden Age Castilians were not so di√erent from other Europeans in their attitudes and behavior toward honor and violence, and that those who, like many anthropologists, believe that the Mediterranean area harbored a culture that was uniquely concerned with honor and violence are mistaken. And if Spain was not so very di√erent, perhaps we could benefit from viewing honor throughout the early modern world less as a code than as a rhetoric.

chapter 3

Honor and the Law

there is a climactic confrontation in Calderón’s The Alcalde of Zalamea (El alcalde de Zalamea), first staged in the 1640s, in which Pedro Crespo, a wealthy peasant and newly chosen alcalde of the town, confronts Don Lope de Figueroa, commander of the army billeted in Zalamea.∞ Crespo’s daughter, Isabel, has been raped by Don Álvaro, a captain and nobleman under Don Lope’s command, and Crespo, acting as the alcalde, has arrested the rapist—illegally, for the captain is governed by martial law—and is about to execute him. d o n l o p e : I have come to take the prisoner away

and punish this outrage. c r e s p o : I have the prisoner right here for what he did right here. d o n l o p e : Don’t you understand that to serve the king means to be judged by the king, and I am the king’s judge? c r e s p o : Don’t you understand he stole from me my daughter right from my house? d o n l o p e : Don’t you know that my rank makes me owner of any case that has occurred? c r e s p o : Don’t you know how contemptuously he stole my honor on a mountain?

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d o n l o p e : Don’t you know how much precedence over you

the charge with which I have been entrusted gives me? c r e s p o : Do you know that I begged him with patience [to marry Isabel, thereby restoring her honor], and he did not want her? d o n l o p e : However you prosecute it, it is better argued in a di√erent jurisdiction. c r e s p o : He has prosecuted my reputation which is outside of your jurisdiction. d o n l o p e : I will make you know satisfaction, I am obligated to get the payment. c r e s p o : I have never asked anyone to do what I can do myself.≤ Here Crespo o√ers an unambiguous assertion that men must avenge o√enses to their honor without the help of legal authorities, even if doing so breaks the law. The law and courts have no power to restore Crespo’s good name, and vengeance can come only through his own actions. Resorting to the law would be as shameful as doing nothing. Don Lope counters Crespo’s view with the rule of law: private vengeance is impermissible. If Don Álvaro has broken the king’s law, his fate rests with the king’s representatives. The code of honor and the law are completely at odds. But the play ends with an ambiguous action by the king: he confirms Crespo as the ‘‘alcalde of Zalamea’’ as a reward for upholding true justice by killing Don Álvaro, despite his trespass on royal law and authority. The juxtaposition of private revenge and the law is not unique to this play. It appears in other honor plays such as Calderón’s The Physician of His Honor and also Lope de Vega’s Peribáñez and the Commander of Ocaña (Peribáñez y el comendador de Ocaña) and Fuenteovejuna, among others. In each of these, as in The Alcalde of Zalamea, the king must consider the struggle between private honor and public law at the end of the play as he is forced to choose between ratifying the honor of men like Pedro Crespo or upholding royal justice by punishing homicide.≥ In Peribáñez and the Commander of Ocaña, Peribáñez is a peasant whose wife is desired by an army commander. In order to get Peribáñez out of the way, the commander makes him a sham army captain and tries to send him o√ to war, but instead Peribáñez uses his newly elevated social status to confront the

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commander and kill him. The king, when he discovers what has occurred, is disturbed by the murder but nevertheless confirms Peribáñez’s military rank and employs him in his army, thus acquiescing in the peasant’s revenge.∂ In Fuenteovejuna, the peasants of the village of Fuenteovejuna band together to kill their lord, who has been raping women of the town. Refusing to name the murderers even under torture, the residents of Fuenteovejuna force the king to pardon them.∑ The Physician of His Honor features Don Gutierre, who suspects his wife, Mencía, of adultery and coerces a surgeon to kill her. The king, aware that Gutierre has killed his wife, does not punish him for the murder but instead goes along with Gutierre’s story that the death was an accident and asks him to marry Leonor, a woman to whom Gutierre was engaged before he married Mencía but whom he cast o√ because he doubted her loyalty to him. Not quite condoning the murder, the king forces Gutierre to live through the same cycle of jealousy, suspicion, and, one imagines, bloody revenge with another woman.∏ Critics have struggled to interpret these ambiguous endings, and historians have been of little help since they traditionally have seen early modern criminal law and practice in Spain as the tools of state repression. Arbitrary powers granted to judges allowed for the oppressive treatment of criminal suspects, who, caught in the labyrinth of Castilian jurisdiction and unschooled in the legal codes, were powerless to defend themselves.π If the kings who pass judgment at the ends of the dramas by Lope and Calderón were meant to represent justice and the law, then clearly there is a wide gulf between the absolutist repression found by historians and the ambiguous justice of Golden Age drama. Historians of Spanish law, anthropologists, writers of contemporary dueling manuals, and jurists have all assumed that the courts stepped in, stopped conflicts, and took control of the judicial process and its outcomes, just as Pedro Crespo feared Don Lope would do in his dispute with Don Álvaro. The standard interpretation of the history of medieval and early modern Spanish law holds that the reign of Isabel and Ferdinand at the end of the fifteenth century marked the victory of royal law over private vengeance.∫ Once the judicial authorities stepped in, power and initiative was in their hands, and the disputants were placed at the mercy of a repressive institution that aimed not at providing impartial justice but at obtaining guilty sentences in order to bolster the authority of the absolutist regime and swell royal co√ers with the fines levied against law-

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breakers.Ω Anthropologists viewed the split from the other side, arguing that people in conflicts over honor were unable to ask the law for help. As Julian Pitt-Rivers, one of the pioneers of the anthropological study of honor, puts it, ‘‘From the individual’s point of view, to have recourse to justice is to abnegate one’s claim to settle one’s debts of honour for oneself, the only way in which they can be settled.’’ The king is therefore ‘‘the enemy of honour.’’∞≠ In The Alcalde of Zalamea, however, Don Lope protests that he, and the royal law, will still satisfy Crespo’s honor. This assertion conforms to what contemporary laws and jurists wrote about the treatment of honor in the law. The Siete partidas, the medieval Castilian law code that still formed the foundation for law in the Golden Age, described the workings of criminal law as essentially one man accusing another before a judge after being ‘‘a√ronted by some wrong, so the accuser described what he did, seeking that vengança [vengeance] be done for it.’’∞∞ Jurists agreed. Hugo de Celso, in his legal reference work The Laws of All the Kingdoms of Castile (Las leyes de todos los reynos de Castilla), published in 1538, drew on the Siete partidas to describe a criminal case as someone accusing another in order to obtain vengeance.∞≤ Juan de Hevia Bolaños, in his guide to the practice of criminal law, Curica philippica, first published in Peru in 1602, mirrored the same language. ‘‘The accuser,’’ he explained, ‘‘is he who puts the crime of the delinquent before the judge in order to take vengeance, accusing him and seeking that they condemn him to appropriate punishments.’’∞≥ Even the men who were most invested in the primacy of law used the term vengeance, implying personal enmity and an active search for retribution, rather than describing criminal law in terms of judges imposing justice, an impersonal process of restoring peace and order. Royal justice was meant to replace private vengeance, but it was a way to achieve vengeance all the same. The problem, according to the aggrieved Pedro Crespo and our standard understanding of the honor code, was that vengeance at the hands of the justice system was no vengeance at all— taking revenge oneself was the only real revenge. The idea that vengeance was the goal of criminal law lends support to the stage kings of Lope and Calderón who granted legitimacy to private vengeance through their equivocal responses to the murder of captains, nobles, and wives. The practice of criminal law in Yébenes and the Good Friday Pardons also confirms the role of vengeance in the legal process.

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Early modern Castilians used the criminal justice system for their own purposes just as much as they were controlled and guided by the judicial authorities, making criminal investigations and trials an integral part of confrontations over honor. Indeed, the elements of criminal procedure resembled those of the duel, including as they did an accusation, a rebuttal, and an agonistic process for determining the truth of the opponents’ statements. While in some circumstances the law certainly could operate as an instrument of social control that left non-elite Castilians with very little power over their fates, in others it became a flexible tool to be used for their own purposes, allowing them to publicly present their own view of themselves—their reputation, conduct, and place in the community— and damage the reputations of their opponents, and to achieve a measure of revenge.∞∂ When legal authorities stepped into a confrontation over honor it meant not the end of interpersonal confrontation but instead a new stage for the conflict, one with a referee and more formal rules of engagement. Despite their remarks on how the law obtained satisfaction for affronts, contemporary commentators tended to agree that law and honor were two separate systems. As the anti-dueling writer Artal de Alagón put it when discussing violent revenge, ‘‘The civil law is so full of laws against the duel and its penalties, and since it is so notorious, there is no need to cite any statute in particular.’’∞∑ For those who did wish to consult the statutes, a wide array of legal commentaries and law manuals emerged during the Golden Age. Throughout the sixteenth century, the main thrust of Castilian jurisprudence was to catalogue, clarify, and comment on the medieval law, updating it to account for the new market-oriented economy of Spain and harmonizing it with Roman law. Chief among the legal scholars was Gregorio López Tovar, who explicated the important summary and catalogue of royal law promulgated in the thirteenth century, the Siete partidas.∞∏ The most lasting legal monument of the century appeared in 1567, the Nueva recopilación, an attempt sponsored by King Philip II to gather all the laws issued by the crown since the Siete partidas, catalogue them, and determine which laws still held force and which had been superseded. While the Nueva recopilación was not as thorough as intended and did not include all the laws of Castile, it did serve as the primary foundation of law throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was reissued in 1640. The next important development in

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Spanish jurisprudence was the appearance of prácticas, which were guides to the practice of law. Often written by practicing judges and lawyers rather than university scholars, these handbooks were for attorneys and judges who had not gone to prestigious universities such as Salamanca or even for wealthy laymen with a lot of business in the courts. The information they provided could be quite basic. Celso’s The Laws of All the Kingdoms of Castile was one of the earliest guides, written in encyclopedic form with headings listed in alphabetical order.∞π Reprinted several times, Celso’s handbook remained the most popular until it was replaced by Alfonso de Villadiego Vascuñada y Montoya’s Policy Instruction and Judicial Practice (Instrucción política y práctica judicial ) in 1612. This was superseded in turn by Hevia Bolaños’s Curica philippica, originally published in Peru in 1602 but printed in Spain first in 1604 and then dozens of times throughout the rest of the century.∞∫ There were also manuals designed specifically as guides for judges, such as Alexo Salgado Correa’s The Book Called the Regimen of Judges (Libro nombrado regimiento de juezes), published in 1556, and the influential Policy for Corregidores and Lords of Vassals (Política para corregidores y señores de vasallos), first published in 1597 by Jerónimo Castillo de Bobadilla, a corregidor, or royal city governor.∞Ω More handbooks appeared in a burst during the 1610s, including Francisco de Pradilla Barnuevo’s brief and influential work of 1613, Treatise and Summary of All the Penal, Canon, and Civil Laws of These Kingdoms (Tratado y summa de todas las leyes penales canónicas civiles y destos reynos).≤≠ Another important manual was Gabriel de Monterroso y Alvarado’s Civil and Criminal Practice and Instruction for Scribes (Práctica civil y criminal e instrucción de escribanos), a 1566 work teaching court scribes the correct procedures for recording legal proceedings. Monterroso’s prescriptions closely mirror the practice of the scribes of Yébenes and the fiel del juzgado.≤∞ All these sources agreed that while judicial duels, such as the one between Pedro de Torrellas and Jerónimo de Ansa, remained part of Castilian law and in theory allowable, they had fallen into disuse after 1522. The private duel, arranged without the permission and oversight of the king, was illegal, and as Artal de Alagón pointed out, without the gilded cover of the ceremonies of the duel, violent confrontations were merely assault and perhaps homicide, forbidden by law. The Nueva recopilación contained a decree of Isabel and Ferdinand from 1480 that explicitly outlawed private duels.≤≤ In 1613 Pradilla Barnuevo was careful

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to explain that while duels had been legal in the past, more recent legislation strictly forbade them. He also noted that, for good measure, there were many acts of canon law outlawing the duel, culminating in the Council of Trent in 1563. He was, however, aware of the hold that honor and dueling maintained on the minds of seventeenth-century Castilians. In another part of his legal guide Pradilla Barnuevo explained that disseminating libelous handbills publicly was a capital crime, and that if ‘‘any o√ense was made by deed and work when someone strikes another, and gives him a blow with the hand or a rod, or some other instrument,’’ the judge should take the crime very seriously, all the more so if the a√ront occurred in a public place. Further, insults such as sodomite, traitor, cuckold, whore, and others should be punished with a heavy fine and a forced retraction before the judge.≤≥ The emphasis on punishing verbal a√ronts was rooted in royal law and appeared explicitly in the Nueva recopilación.≤∂ Not only was the duel clearly illegal, then, but so too were the a√ronts that duels were meant to address. The right to punish insulting words and gestures belonged to the judge, not the o√ended party. Jurists also assumed that the process of criminal law would remain firmly in the hands of judges and their assistants. The mere existence of the práctica genre endorsed this claim since its whole purpose was to encourage conscientious, learned judges, and thereby the just administration of the law and the right ordering of society. Salgado Correa’s Regimen of Judges was above all an admonition that judges be upright, virtuous examples to the community and careful practitioners of their craft, important advice in 1556 as the law was increasingly being decided by a professional body of trained jurists, both lawyers and judges, instead of high-ranking men appointed by lords and kings who chose them based on their loyalty and judgment. Salgado Correa focused on the judge’s character more than the fine points of the law, assuming that if the man in charge was righteous, so too would be the decisions of the court.≤∑ Similarly, in 1597 Castillo de Bobadilla comprehensively outlined the responsibilities of the corregidor and how to fulfill them, with the implication that the correct administration of the law rested wholly in the corregidor’s hands. Hevia Bolaños provided a clear outline of how criminal investigations should proceed, from the victim accusing his o√ender of a crime through the questioning of witnesses, the seizure of the accused and his or her goods, the statement made by the accused in response to the accusation, and the sifting through

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of evidence by the judge. Next came the formal trial, with the judge confronting witnesses with their testimony and asking them to ratify their statements, torturing the accused if applicable, and finally assigning a sentence.≤∏ Here Hevia Bolaños imagined a judge presiding over a smoothly functioning and lengthy process, with all the control in his hands after the initial accusation. Villadiego described the criminal process as a more casual a√air where the judge could choose to summarily dismiss or fine the accused after he or she answered the charges, binding them over with sureties to ensure future good behavior or even simply dismissing the charges and releasing the accused without a formal trial if the matter was not serious and the accused maintained his or her innocence.≤π While more lenient, flexible, and brief than the process described by Hevia Bolaños, Villadiego still put all the power in the hands of the judge, whose discretion would determine whether a suspect would be released without charges or would undergo a lengthy trial. Golden Age jurists agreed that dueling, violence, and a√ronts were wholly illegal and that judges entirely controlled the legal process that punished those who broke the law through violent deed or insulting word. On the face of things, the operation of the law in Yébenes seemed to follow the structure that jurists laid out in their manuals, although it more closely resembled Villadiego’s brief, pliant process than Hevia Bolaños’s lengthy, intractable one. Judicial intervention most commonly began with an averiguación, an inquiry in which the justicia of Yébenes gathered information. Most of this information was recorded in the form of depositions, narratives that described the violent confrontation in question. The justicia of Yébenes was then supposed to remit the case to Toledo and send the reo, or person accused, to Toledo to wait in jail. There o≈cials of the fiel del juzgado would question the suspect and then decide whether to pass a summary judgment—almost always a fine, sometimes with an additional penalty or warning—or give the suit a formal trial. Only a handful of cases survived this winnowing process to reach a formal trial. But while technically the judicial process in Yébenes followed the form outlined by the legal guides, in practice, power only seemed to rest in the hands of the judicial authorities in Yébenes and Toledo. In fact, these men had to share control over the course of justice with the participants in the criminal suit themselves and with the witnesses to the dispute. Not only were participants in a dispute able to prosecute a criminal case

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against their opponents and call witnesses to support their allegations, but the justicia of Yébenes was entirely dependent on the stories told by participants and witnesses in their depositions. The justicia made no detective-like investigations, nor did they engage in torture or any other coercive inquisitorial practices while questioning witnesses and participants.≤∫ Meanwhile, alongside the legal process, participants in the dispute continued their important extralegal action leading toward conciliation. The apartamiento, or private pardon, and the fee de amistades, or pledge of reconciliation, were the two most important ways for opponents to resolve their disputes, and these actions were recorded as part of the records. Furthermore, women were involved at every stage of the process, even though the law provided no formal role for them. Despite its nominal conformity to the process imagined and described by Golden Age jurists, power in criminal procedure tilted subtly toward the participants and witnesses—the people of Yébenes, who used the system to either achieve vengeance against their opponents or reach a peaceful reconciliation. This slant is almost imperceptible today, and was to the jurists of the Golden Age as well, because judicial authorities of course still exercised a great deal of influence over the course of criminal investigations, and also because they retained control over the actual physical actions involved: putting questions to witnesses, recording the results, determining guilt, choosing punishments, and so on. But a close examination of the criminal investigations in Yébenes reveals a malleable process open to the influence of those it was supposed to govern.≤Ω The fiel del juzgado found himself in much the same position as the kings of the honor plays, ratifying decisions already made by community members as much as imposing justice from above.

experiencing the law There were two ways that a criminal proceeding, called a causa criminal or proceso, could begin.≥≠ Usually, the judicial authorities acted when they heard that a crime had been committed, taking it upon themselves to open an investigation without prompting from either of the parties involved. These investigations were called de oficio, and the scribes sometimes labeled them as such. Scribes normally began the records of de oficio cases with a brief summary of the incident they were about to investigate, as in the case involving Eugenio Pérez Oliva and Francisco

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Gómez Montemayor in the shoemaker’s shop: ‘‘In the village of Yébenes de Toledo on the seventh day of the month of May of the year 1615, the señor Juan Martín Çid, chief alcalde in this village of Yébenes, said that it has come to his attention that today in the Calle Real of this town, in the jurisdiction of Toledo, Eugenio Pérez Oliva, vecino [tax-paying householder] of this town, and Francisco Gómez Montemayor, vecino of Yébenes, have fought and had words of rancor and have challenged one another to a duel, and a shoemaker’s mallet has been thrown by one at the other, so to investigate the case and so that those guilty will be punished, an investigation and report of the matter are to be made by the o≈ce of the justicia.’’≥∞ Judicial proceedings could also begin when people who felt injured by the crimes of another party made a complaint to the judicial authorities, called a querella. The plainti√, or querellante, would make an argument for bringing criminal charges against an opponent, as Juan Macho did in the following case: ‘‘Juan Macho, servant of Juan Lópes Portillo, brought a criminal accusation against Pedro and Antón, servants of Ysabel García, widow of Diego de Palacios, vecina of this village, and telling his case, he said that last night at seven he was in the house of Ysabel García removing shoes from some mules when they approached him and threw him to the ground and gave him many kicks and punches, which wounded him in the face and knocked out his teeth, and he begs the grace of the said alcalde that he order an investigation and arrest them, and that justice be done.’’≥≤ Plainti√ ’s complaints varied in sophistication from a simple complaint about an a√ront that included hardly any details of the case to elaborate documents drafted by attorneys that described in detail the o√enses committed, the good character and high position that the o√ended party enjoyed in the village, and the scandal that the crime had caused in the neighborhood. The judicial authorities could then choose whether or not to pursue the case, although of course no record of the complaints that the alcaldes chose not to pursue exists in the fiel del juzgado’s archive in Toledo. Roughly two-thirds of the cases found in the fiel del juzgado’s archive began as de oficio investigations. A variety of causes could induce the judicial authorities to open a case. The decision to do so would have been easiest when a violent confrontation involved one of the constables or alcaldes themselves or occurred in their presence, or when a bystander

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ran to fetch the judicial authorities to stop an ongoing confrontation. Usually, however, the authorities heard about incidents after they were over, as with the fight in the shoemaker’s shop. The infliction of physical harm was one of the most common triggers to a judicial investigation. Often the authorities would hear that a person was recovering in bed from a wound after an assault. In these cases the lines between cases de oficio and cases pursued by an aggrieved party were blurred, since the victim could not leave home to open the case personally and it seems likely that a family member or friend of the wounded person would have been the one to alert the authorities. For example, a man could open a case as the legal guardian or agent of his wounded wife or child. De oficio proceedings could begin after a merely verbal confrontation as well. Public confrontations could lead to a de oficio investigation, but less public ones could too if rumor of the incident spread through the community, causing what the records called escandalo and nota, or scandal and gossip. In sum, all types of confrontation could lead to de oficio investigations, and there seems to be no clear distinction between those cases that were begun de oficio and those that were brought by the aggrieved party. The fiel del juzgado or his subordinates in Toledo also opened a small minority of cases. Although the authorities in Toledo would normally get involved in cases only after the o≈cials in Yébenes had made their initial investigation, they occasionally opened an investigation themselves. They were motivated to do so especially when one of the alcaldes or constables was himself suspected of a crime and when the local o≈cials were suspected of neglecting their duties or of protecting a crony who had committed an o√ense. Once begun, cases opened by constables of the fiel del juzgado proceeded just like those that originated with the Yébenes o≈cials, except that the fiel del juzgado’s men were in charge of every part of the investigation. Of course, only those occasions in which the judicial o≈cials decided to carry out an investigation survive in the archives, so we have little way of knowing what types of rumors and personal pleas failed to motivate the authorities to act. Even at the very beginning of the investigation, the practice of law in Yébenes sometimes deviated from the jurists’ manuals. According to the strict interpretation of criminal law, widows were the only women eligible to begin lawsuits, civil or criminal. Husbands were supposed to act on behalf of married women and fathers on behalf of those still unmarried, a

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legal rule that explains why many accusations in Yébenes began with men making complaints about the mistreatment of their wives. However, in Yébenes women had a wide latitude for legal action that was not sanctioned by any written law. When María de Ureña and her husband, Martín Ximénez, allegedly insulted, threatened, and assaulted Josepha Ibáñez in 1634, Ibáñez brought suit against them, appearing before the alcalde herself, in her own name, with the permission of her husband, Pedro de la Torre.≥≥ While such examples are rare, they do exist, belying the idea that the law was an a√air for men only. Another place where we may suspect women’s activity is in all those cases that began de oficio. In one such case from 1628, the alcalde Francisco Marín de Sandobal opened an investigation after the death of Catalina Fernández. He had heard that María Gómez and María López la Cuerba had gone around Yébenes the night before complaining that when they went to visit Fernández, who was ill, her husband, Mateo Fernández Terzero, had not let them in his house. The two women told people they suspected that Fernández and her husband had fought. When the alcalde questioned the two women, however, they changed their story and said that their ‘‘suspicion was without foundation,’’ that Fernández seemed to have died ‘‘naturally’’ (an assertion backed up by an investigating physician), and that her husband was an ‘‘hombre de bien.’’≥∂ Time and again a judicial authority in Yébenes opened a criminal investigation with a statement explaining that the rumor of a crime ‘‘has come to my attention,’’ without elaborating further on what he had heard and from whom. Women such as Gómez and López la Cuerba, and their gossip and reporting, were in all likelihood the hidden cause of a great many investigations de oficio.≥∑ The two examples of women causing the initiation of investigations raise another key point about the legal process. Josepha Ibáñez went to the authorities to complain about an a√ront to her good name, and María Gómez and María López la Cuerba publicly pointed a finger at Mateo Fernández Terzero and then later changed their minds and swore to his good character. Reputation and a√ront were at the heart of the complaints in these cases, and plainti√s and the accused appealed to the legal system to defend the truth of their claims to good character. In other words, the patterns of honor and the duel continued to play out during the course of the criminal investigation. Like the duel, the criminal investigation em-

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bodied a collection of public rituals dedicated to disputing truth and reputation. As the medieval Siete partidas put it at the beginning of its section on criminal law, ‘‘An accusation is something providing a path for those who want to know the truth about bad deeds, reaching a greater certainty about them.’’≥∏ Salgado Correa agreed, exhorting judges to be completely impartial and not be predisposed to find a suspect guilty or innocent, because the judge’s true role was ‘‘to inquire into and to ascertain the truth about the guilt.’’≥π Witnesses swore oaths to tell the truth about what they thought had occurred and who said what to whom, and when they varied from the account given by the accused, witness depositions were a formalized version of giving the lie. In the duel the posturing that occurred before combat was more important than the actual physical violence, since it was through this process that participants ascribed meaning to the dispute. Criminal investigations served the same purpose, giving both parties, their supporters, and bystanders another chance to weigh in with their opinions about who possessed honor, whether an a√ront had occurred, and who had disgraced themselves, just as they had been doing in the streets, houses, and taverns of Yébenes. Although judicial o≈cials controlled the setting and limited the possible moves of opponents to legal action, the investigation was not the end of the confrontation and the beginning of a rational, impartial, and state-controlled intervention into the lives of the people of Yébenes—instead, it simply gave the participants a new arena in which to continue their struggle.≥∫ Above all, the criminal process resembled the duel in that it was an aggressive, agonistic conflict between two parties. This was most evident when one opponent opened criminal proceedings against another, but even those cases which began de oficio, unprompted by the victims, retained the same dynamics of a dispute over truth and reputation. Furthermore, the collection of evidence, called the información sumaria, was not an impartial investigation, since its goal was to build a case against the suspect, not merely to collect data—there was no presumption of innocence in early modern Castilian criminal law. Thus, in criminal cases, as in the duel, if there was any confusion over who the injured party was and who the accuser was it needed to be sorted out before the process could begin. Villadiego advised that if two men were wounded in a fight, the authorities should apprehend them both until it could be determined which one was the aggressor. If only one was wounded, one should assume that the other

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was at fault.≥Ω Witnesses usually agreed on the general outline of what happened, however. They also often agreed that the suspect was to blame, forcefully disparaging the character of the suspect. When the justicia began an investigation against Juan Serrano in 1626, for example, about a confrontation that occurred in the church cemetery between Serrano and Lic. Diego Pérez Oliva, Yébenes’s parish priest, witnesses agreed that Serrano was the aggressor. They claimed that Serrano had arrived ‘‘with great anger,’’ challenging the priest by saying to him, ‘‘I say now what you said about me [earlier],’’ with a sword tucked under his arm, intending to kill Pérez Oliva. The witnesses also testified that Serrano was an uncontrollable, violent man, having engaged in many brawls in the past and even once attacked a married woman in her home.∂≠ Here, clearly, Serrano’s reputation and his previous behavior was brought to bear on the case, becoming part of the evidence about what happened that day. This kind of hearsay evidence about the character of the accused, inadmissible in modern courts, was standard for Castilian law, especially since the actual facts of the case, who said and did what, often occurred in full view of the public and were not really in dispute.∂∞ In other cases witnesses defended the reputation of the accuser, as in 1627 when witnesses were asked whether Francisco López Portillo was responsible for the discharge of a shotgun from the window of his house toward two other young men. First the witnesses declared that they were neither related to the three men involved nor in debt to them, and that they had no part in the events that led to the firing of the weapon. Then they agreed that the two plainti√s were ‘‘honorable men,’’ peaceful men, and good Christians who were not accustomed to fighting, who were fearful of God and not at all given to disturbances and brawls, who were not accustomed to going out at night or to causing scandal or notoriety, and who always tried to reconcile their friends who had fallings out.∂≤ Similarly, when Esteban Pañinas brought suit against Alonso de Ávila for calling Pañinas’s nephew a Morisco and the son of a Morisca and adding that he could prove it, Pañinas was able to find witness after witness who swore that his family was a good Old Christian family with no stain whatsoever to its lineage.∂≥ Defendants would get a chance to deny the allegations of their opponents and the witnesses later, after the transcripts of the investigation had been sent to the fiel del juzgado in Toledo, but witnesses partial to the

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accused might begin to refute the charges right away. The freedom of witnesses to disagree with an accuser’s allegations meant that, like the duel, legal proceedings took the form of a dispute about truth and reputation, even if technically the justicia’s task was to build up evidence against the accused. In 1624 Juan Anaya Majano accused Lic. Juan Cid of trying to insult him and his wife publicly when he said in the plaza of Yébenes that they had been jailed in Toledo for fraudulently putting horse fat in candles they sold. Cid’s defense was that he had merely been repeating matter-offactly what others had said about Anaya Majano, with no intention of insulting them. Witnesses backed him up, testifying that he had said it ‘‘simply and without passion’’ and had just been repeating gossip he had heard.∂∂ In most cases it would be easy to assume that the witnesses were allies of one side or the other and just swore blindly to whatever their friends wanted. Sometimes, however, witnesses would support some of the charges but dismiss others, as in 1629 when Lucas Hernández, a servant, accused Alonso del Pejo, a blacksmith, of having hit him on the head with a rod in a tavern when Hernández asked him for the rod. Other blacksmiths who were there testified that del Pejo had indeed hit Hernández with the rod but added that when Hernández asked him for it, he called del Pejo a son of a whore, a fact that Hernández neglected to mention when he brought his case before the justicia.∂∑ On occasion, witnesses could dismiss the basis for an investigation altogether, as in the same year when Juan Sánchez brought suit against Maria Gómez la Montera for having called his wife a whore and a thief. When questioned, some of the witnesses argued that it was a quarrel of no consequence and that the alleged insult never occurred.∂∏ Indeed, testifying as a witness was another indirect way for women, formally barred from bringing suit, to exert powerful influence over the legal process. Investigating authorities seem to have treated the testimony of women the same as that of men and to have sought out women as witnesses without qualms, as they did in the cases mentioned above where Josepha Ibáñez, María Gómez, and María López la Cuerba all gave testimony to the courts and even initiated judicial proceedings.∂π As custodians of the reputations of their neighbors, all the residents of Yébenes, even women, played a role in the dispute. While it may seem that a confrontation and its investigation focused exclusively on the principal disputants, the entire community was crucial to the confrontations—

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if no one had heard the insults and could tell others about it, the original a√ront would lose much of its sting.∂∫ The criminal investigations were public a√airs, normally taking place not in the secrecy of a court building but in the open atmosphere of people’s residences, where we can only guess as to who else was present during the questioning. The publicity of the investigations helped the criminal proceedings in furthering the goals of the disputants: to defend their reputations and disparage their opponents. One can imagine that the witnesses, who were not sworn to secrecy, would have repeated publicly what they told the justicia.∂Ω Even the swearing of oaths that occurred during confrontations—‘‘I swear to God that I will kill you,’’ or ‘‘I swear to God that no one will arrest me’’— provides another link between legal and extralegal conflict, as each of the witnesses questioned in an investigation formally swore to tell the truth about what happened. The legal process further resembled confrontations over honor in the disputants’ ability to escalate or dampen their conflicts during the course of the investigation. Some people, on finding themselves the subject of a criminal investigation, initiated criminal proceedings against their opponents in a countersuit. When Juan Bermejo brought a suit against Ana Fernández for calling him a miserly rich man who devoured the poor (as discussed in the previous chapter), his suit was actually a response to her prosecution of him for calling her a filthy, drunken bellaca who lied and gave false testimony in legal cases.∑≠ Sometimes further conflict occurred while the authorities went about the business of a case. In 1613, Juan Sánchez de Bermejo took refuge in the parish church of Yébenes in order to escape the justicia, who were trying to capture him at the request of the Royal Chancellery of Granada, from whose hands he had escaped while awaiting trial for murder, dueling, and distributing ‘‘defamatory libels’’ about a previous chief governador of Yébenes, Lic. Eugenio Múnoz al Guzmán, and trying to burn down his house. While the justicia were waiting for him to leave the church so they could seize him, several other men from Yébenes entered the sanctuary and attacked Sánchez de Bermejo with their swords and, according to Sánchez de Bermejo, called him a liar and a thief and threatened to cut o√ his ears.∑∞ There were also ways to show leniency toward one’s opponent. When cases began de oficio, the authorities would often ask the aggrieved party if he or she wished to prosecute, and normally the aggrieved party chose

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not to for the time being, letting the justicia continue the case on its own while retaining the right to prosecute later. This way, one’s opponent might be punished even as the victim, by seemingly forgoing his or her desire for vengeance, appeared magnanimous. Sometimes a refusal to prosecute may have been an attempt by the o√ended party to avoid retribution at the hands of the accused. Sometimes the o√ended party went further and requested that the justicia not proceed, claiming that the matter was not very important. Bartolomé Cid Alférez and Luis Esteban, for example, traded insults and drew their weapons against each other in the plaza in 1616. During the investigation, however, they appeared together before the scribe who was recording the proceedings and said that they had only been ‘‘joking like friends,’’ and that since they were ‘‘true friends,’’ neither should be punished.∑≤ Perhaps they really were friends engaged in violent, disruptive joking, or perhaps they had been threatening each other in earnest but had since patched up their di√erences and simply wanted to stay out of trouble. Mateo Sánchez, a priest who was stabbed and beaten in the hospital in Yébenes by two paupers in 1626, claimed that the wound was ‘‘of little consideration’’ and did not break the skin, and that therefore he did not want the authorities to prosecute his assailants.∑≥ Perhaps the Christian virtues of forgiveness and mercy, which the writers of anti-dueling tracts such as Jerónimo de Urrea and Juan Antonio Lozano praised so much as an antidote to the duel, influenced the priest. The apartamiento and the fee de amistades were more formal and more common ways for opponents to reconcile, and to do so within the structure of legal proceedings. The day after the incident in the shoemaker’s shop in which the constable Eugenio Pérez Oliva knocked the hat o√ Miguel Domínguez, Domínguez appeared before the scribe who was recording the case and announced that he and the constable had ‘‘grasped hands as friends,’’ and that he did not want to prosecute Pérez Oliva for the incident.∑∂ Grasping hands was a ritual that symbolized reconciliation, and usually a mutual friend or respected member of the community, sometimes a priest, helped arrange the meeting. Afterward, this third party would ensure that the scribe made a record of the fee de amistades, or pledge of reconciliation, in the case file.∑∑ Another way to reconcile was for one or both opponents to pardon the other. An apartamiento, literally meaning separation or disengagement, was an action by which someone

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formally withdrew from a lawsuit. In practice the apartamiento was a private pardon, an acknowledgment that the pardoner did not want to proceed any further in the case against his or her o√ender and a request that the justicia of Yébenes and the fiel del juzgado not proceed any further. As with all legal mechanisms, there was an element of the routine; people were more or less expected to withdraw from the prosecution of serious cases so that their opponents would not su√er corporal punishment. The community seems to have exerted pressure on plainti√s to pardon their enemies in the interests of Christian charity and keeping the peace, and those granting private pardons often recorded a formulaic statement to explain why they did so: ‘‘having been asked by principal and honored men’’ and because Christ pardoned the plainti√ ’s own sins. We should not forget, however, that coercing the victim of an attack to grant an apartamiento could also be a way for the accused to underline the powerlessness of his or her opponent and intensify the humiliation.∑∏ Those issuing private pardons had the right to ask for compensation or other concessions. Compensation could take the form of a monetary payment, especially in serious cases such as a husband being slain and the widow and children needing support, or it could mean imposing some type of exile on the accused so as not to o√end the injured party with his or her presence. For example, when Alonso Díaz died in 1615, allegedly from a wound inflicted a month earlier by his brother-in-law, Francisco Sánchez, his widow, Juana de Palacios, pardoned Sánchez under the condition that he would not live in the house of María Palacios, the widow’s mother and Sánchez’s mother-in-law.∑π Law manuals such as Hevia Bolaños’s Curica philippica and Villadiego’s Policy Instruction and Judicial Practice expressly noted that private pardons could be granted in exchange for money, except in the case of adultery, when doing so would make the husband a pimp.∑∫ In 1624, the constable Juan Durango took advantage of this possibility when he pardoned the two men who wounded him after he asked them to give him their swords because it was night. Durango’s private pardon was conditional on the parents of the two young men giving him twenty ducados (gold coins).∑Ω Sometimes pardoners explained their reasons for forgiveness, a few of them mentioning the lightness of their wounds. Others cited prior relationships or other mitigating circumstances that led to their private pardons. Pasqual Rodríguez prosecuted Francisco Ruiz Pañinas in 1621 for slapping and insulting Rodríguez’s son, but he later pardoned

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Ruiz Pañinas because he had learned that his son had provoked the attack.∏≠ Lic. Diego Pérez Oliva, a parish priest, pardoned Juan Bermejo de la Barrera for attacking him with a sword and insulting him, because their parents had been friends.∏∞ Private pardons and pledges of reconciliation did not stop legal proceedings, despite the language in them that asked the justicia to end their prosecution of the accused, but the private pardon had at least one legal consequence: once one had been granted, the judge could no longer impose corporal punishment in any form except condemnation to the galleys, sparing one from the lash, mutilation, and execution.∏≤ More important, if criminal cases were tools that individuals employed to prosecute their opponents in private disputes, private pardons and pledges of reconciliation might end the dispute in the eyes of the opponents, if not in the eyes of the authorities. Private pardons also represented another opportunity for women to influence the legal process, as Juana de Palacios did in the example above. Catalina Gómez, a widow, first prosecuted Sebastián López de San Marcos in Yébenes in 1623 for having assaulted her daughter Ana. Later she issued a private pardon on the condition that López de San Marcos pay all the costs of pressing her suit.∏≥ While homicide was rare among the criminal cases from Yébenes, the royal pardons, which almost always involved serious crimes, show that homicide could mean substantial monetary recompense, as when Isabel García pardoned her brother-inlaw Juan Crespo for having killed her husband, Fernando Gorgoxo, in the village of Toral de los Guzmanes in 1650. In return for her pardon, García received six hundred reales from Crespo to support herself and her children.∏∂ The importance of private pardons for mitigating punishments gave women powerful leverage to exact concessions from those who had threatened their honor, interests, and lives. While the disputants advanced or moderated their positions, the Yébenes justicia carried on other tasks to conclude the investigation. Jurisdictional issues had to be sorted out, especially if the crime was committed in the Calle Real, the main road through Yébenes that split the town into the jurisdiction of the Montes de Toledo to the west and the Order of San Juan to the east. There were frequent arguments as to which side of the Calle Real people were on when they were involved in confrontations or apprehended, and the justicia of ‘‘Yébenes de Toledo’’ consulted with the justicia of ‘‘Yébenes de la Orden.’’ Occasionally a suspect

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claimed to be a clergyman, which created another jurisdictional issue to be decided since clergy were subject to the ecclesiastical court of the archbishop of Toledo. Pedro Cordovés was a young man accused of fighting in the street in 1630 with Gabriel García, another youth, after they met in the street and García refused to do√ his hat to Cordovés. Cordovés produced letters from the University of Salamanca and the archbishop of Toledo verifying that he had taken minor orders and could not be prosecuted by the fiel del juzgado. (This strategy was unsuccessful: the fiel del juzgado sentenced him to pay a modest fine.)∏∑ The justicia could also seek the advice of expert witnesses, although in Yébenes this was limited to consulting with surgeons. When a victim was wounded in an assault, the surgeon would give his opinion as to what type of weapon caused the injury. The purpose of this consultation was to ascertain whether the injury was caused in the manner that the injured person claimed, which was important because suspects sometimes would admit that they had fought with the victim but insist that they had never harmed the wounded person, and that the alleged victim received his or her injuries in some other manner. Surgeons also testified that wounds had healed, giving a fee de sanidad, a pledge of health that might help the suspect escape a heavier sentence for his or her assault. The most disruptive part of the investigation, from the suspect’s point of view, was imprisonment and the seizure of his or her goods. The confinement was meant to be custodial, so that the suspect did not run away to escape punishment. The goal of confiscating the goods was to ensure that the suspect would not be able to sell or give them away and then claim poverty when it came time to pay a fine and the costs of the proceedings.∏∏ The practical result of arrest and the confiscation of goods was that the suspect found him- or herself in jail, where one was supposed to pay for one’s own food and care. Furthermore, the suspect would soon be on the way to the prison in Toledo after the Yébenes authorities remitted the case to the fiel del juzgado. Arrest and confiscation also meant having one’s neighbors watch as the justicia came to the house, apprehended their suspect, and removed the goods. The hardship and shame that arrest inflicted led a number of people to flee or resist arrest, and a significant number of cases in the archive of the fiel del juzgado arose from people attacking constables who were trying to seize them. The justicia in Yébenes dealt with suspects who fled by prosecuting them en

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rebeldía (in default or rebellion), which meant that they seized the suspect’s goods and advanced the transcript of the investigation to the o≈ce of the fiel del juzgado without the participation of the accused. The fiel del juzgado would then order a public crier, a pregonero, to announce in Yébenes, on three occasions, that the suspect was wanted for crimes. If after the third announcement the suspect still had not been apprehended, he or she was pronounced to be en rebeldía, and a letter was sent out to the authorities throughout the Montes de Toledo informing them about the fugitive and asking them to seize him or her if possible. Occasionally the fiel del juzgado proceeded against the suspect even if the authorities failed to seize him or her, but usually the case simply stalled until such time as they were able to arrest the missing suspect. Once the justicia of Yébenes had questioned the witnesses and performed the other tasks of the investigation, the alcalde overseeing the investigation had to decide whether to remit the case to the fiel del juzgado. Because the archive of the fiel del juzgado only includes those cases that were sent, there is no way of knowing how the alcalde decided which investigations merited being sent on to Toledo and which ones were inconclusive or unimportant and could therefore be ignored, stopped, or left to languish in the alcalde’s own hands without notifying his superiors in Toledo about them. Thanks to the occasional instances when the fiel del juzgado prosecuted the alcaldes and constables themselves for neglecting their duty, however, the records can show what was expected of them. For example, in 1623 the fiel del juzgado sent one of his own constables to Yébenes to prosecute some of the judicial o≈cials there because he had heard that a Yébenes alcalde had been involved in a dispute that had not been remitted properly. The Toledo constable confronted Francisco Marín de Sandobal, the alcalde from Yébenes who had overseen the case, and rhetorically asked him whether it was true that the alcaldes of Yébenes ‘‘do not have criminal jurisdiction [that is, the constable was pointing out that only the fiel del juzgado had the right to pass judgment], and that if any case should begin either de oficio or because someone makes a complaint, the alcaldes have an obligation to record the case, to seize the suspect, and within three days to remit the suspect as a prisoner with the suit they had written up?’’ Marín de Sandobal admitted that these were indeed his responsibilities but explained that in this instance there was a delay, first because the case had been poorly investigated, and then because the sus-

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pect was not well (she had just given birth).∏π The questioning shows that in theory, the alcaldes were supposed to forward all the criminal cases they began to the fiel del juzgado. There is no way of knowing how many cases the alcaldes failed to remit, either because of negligence, because of a desire to protect friends (as other investigations into their behavior allege), or because they deemed the case inconsequential. The o≈cers probably passed most serious cases on to Toledo, for fear that the fiel del juzgado would discipline them as he did Marín de Sandobal. Historians have characterized early modern legal authorities as powerful, arbitrary figures who exercised a repressive form of justice. This view rests on the fact that they acted as prosecutors as well as judges, and that because they kept a third of all fines meted out as punishments, they were motivated to levy fines as often as possible. Judges did not presume suspects to be innocent, there was no legally required form that a criminal investigation had to take, and there was no guaranteed right to appeal. Moreover, when sentencing, judges did not cite an individual crime for which the suspect had been found guilty, and there were no clear sentencing guides that judges had to follow. Virtually unaccountable to any higher authority for their decisions and dependent on fines for revenue, judges had the motivation and means to steer the criminal process toward finding suspects guilty of an unspecified crime and then sentencing them to pay fines. Furthermore, just as elsewhere in early modern Europe, the Castilian judicial system was ine≈cient at finding and prosecuting criminals, so the courts relied on terror to deter crime, issuing heavy punishments against those whom they were able to capture and prosecute to serve as examples to the rest of the community.∏∫ In Yébenes justice was indeed arbitrary, but rather than being oppressive, it was supportive of reconciliation and responsive to the desires of the conflicting parties—in other words, justice in Yébenes was flexible. The fiel del juzgado, dependent as he was on the cooperation of members of the community, tended in his decisions to confirm community norms and ratify community decisions, which were expressed in the form of witness testimony about the character of the opponents, private pardons, and pledges of reconciliation. While the o≈ce of the fiel del juzgado in Toledo held ultimate control over criminal justice and issued the final rulings, the fiel del juzgado and his sta√ were dependent on the work of the alcaldes, constables, and scribes of the justicia in Yébenes to carry out their work and

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reach their decisions. These lesser o≈cials were in turn dependent on the witnesses and participants in confrontations whom they interrogated. There were rarely any additional investigations from Toledo, and there is no record that the fiel del juzgado coerced testimony from the suspects or even interrogated all of them thoroughly. The interrogation, called the confesión or quistión, began with a reading of witnesses’ depositions to the suspect, and then the Toledo o≈cials would ask the suspect whether they were true. Sometimes the fiel del juzgado’s lieutenant pressed the suspect for more details if he thought that he or she was not telling the truth, but as often as not the o≈cials did not follow up at all on the suspect’s response, even when those questioned simply denied everything. The judge in Toledo used his arbitrary power to ensure that the vast majority of those who were sent to him did not undergo a complete trial but were instead given a summary sentence. These sentences usually took the form of a moderate fine and the obligation to pay for the costs of the criminal proceedings. Furthermore, in the cases where a private pardon or pledge of reconciliation took place in Yébenes, the fiel del juzgado often strengthened the reconciliation by ordering the guilty party to keep the terms of the pardon or risk further legal punishment, which might add to the fine already paid or even add a more serious punishment such as exile from the village for a period of several years. This form of suspended sentence reinforced the resolution already achieved by the participants in conflict along with their neighbors in the community. The sheer magnitude of the responsibilities laid at the feet of the judicial authorities also lessened the opportunity for the fiel del juzgado to act as a repressive agent of the state. The alcaldes and constables in Yébenes and the fiel del juzgado and his o≈cials in Toledo covered a much larger jurisdiction than they could reasonably be expected to police. The justicia of Yébenes comprised perhaps a half dozen people overseeing a jurisdiction whose population varied from around two thousand to almost four thousand in the period 1600–1650. The o≈ce of the fiel del juzgado oversaw criminal and civil procedures for an area stretching thirty-five miles from Yébenes in the east to its western limits and twentyfive miles north to south, and containing ten other settlements (although none were as large as Yébenes). Both judicial bodies were only semiprofessional, with the alcaldes and constables being chosen from among the residents of Yébenes, and the fiel del juzgado rotating among the

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aldermen, usually noblemen, who sat on the council that governed Toledo and held the position of fiel del juzgado for three-year tenures.∏Ω One could forgive these o≈cials if their attitude was less a zealous pursuit of the truth, as Salgado Correa urged in his Regimen of Judges, than weary irritation at having to settle yet another dispute, petty in their view, between recalcitrant peasants and artisans. The goal of justice was not to intervene deeply in the lives of the people who came under their scrutiny, nor to dig to the root of the problems that led people to conflict, but to do the minimum amount of work necessary to address the immediate problem and calm the situation. Anthropologists have noted that in most premodern dispute settlements there was little distinction between judicial o≈cials acting as umpires who sought to punish and impose the law and judicial o≈cials acting as mediators who hoped only to end a dispute. The behavior of the fiel del juzgado and the justicia of Yébenes conformed to this dual role.π≠ Like the kings on the Golden Age stage, they were in the ambivalent position of controlling the formal apparatus of justice while being somewhat powerless to reverse the settlements that the non-elite residents of Yébenes made in the interests of their own honor. There was still a role for the participants to play once the paperwork and the suspect reached Toledo. This was the suspect’s chance finally to refute the charges, since until then normally no one would have questioned the suspect. According to the letter of the law, the interrogation was the first point at which the suspect was formally made aware of the charges brought against him or her, charges that the investigation had been written up to prove.π∞ Here the suspect had a choice between contradicting his or her accusers and acknowledging some degree of guilt. The accused was presented with the story of the confrontation as his or her opponents and the witnesses had told it and was asked under oath whether that narrative was true. Often, to challenge the statements their opponents made, suspects provided an alternative version of the events. In 1609 Catalina Ruiz complained to the justicia that when she went to collect a debt from the wife of Juan de Sevilla de Bernaldo, he beat her about the head in response, even though his wife asked him to stop. Sevilla de Bernaldo’s counter-story was that he had told Ruiz many times not to enter his house because she was ‘‘not a well-mannered woman,’’ and when he found her there he merely pushed her outside.π≤ Other suspects chose to bring up mitigating circumstances that they believed excused their behavior. They said that

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they had been acting in self-defense, or that their opponents were bringing up scurrilous charges against them out of malice, or that they had not even been involved in the original fight and only got involved to try to make peace between the combatants, and so on. Sometimes the accused tried to cast the entire criminal case as a misunderstanding. The wounds were inflicted in an accident, not willfully, they would claim, or the confrontation was simply playing or joking (burlando) that got out of hand or was misconstrued by observers as an earnest confrontation. Others chose to deny the charges flatly and make no further statement—in e√ect, giving their accusers the lie just as they would do out of court, according to the rituals of the duel. Also, as with the rhetoric of honor out of court, reputation was at stake, and defendants frequently attacked the character of their accusers, just as Sevilla de Bernaldo did to Catalina Ruiz. If the o√ense involved slander, then the accused might a≈rm the good character of the aggrieved party. This is what María López, accused of calling Pedro Martín a bellaco, a pimp, and a cuckold, did. When the fiel del juzgado’s men asked her if she had said and done those things, she denied it. When asked whether she would acknowledge that Martín and his wife were ‘‘honorable and principal people, who behaved well and were of good repute,’’ and that Martín’s wife was ‘‘an honorable and modest woman,’’ she agreed that ‘‘she holds them as such, and they always have been, and she knows no evidence to the contrary.’’π≥ López had every motivation to swear to the good character of Martín and his wife since Martín had made doing so a condition of the private pardon that he o√ered López, but retractions like this one were common whenever defamation was at issue. López was careful to insist that she had never insulted Martín, and maybe she never had. But if a suspect had said something insulting about his or her accuser publicly so that many people knew of it, then retracted it in the Toledo jail, it could have been interpreted as a humiliating retreat. After all, according to dueling manuals, giving the lie was one of the most o√ensive things a Castilian could do to another, and going back on one’s word was a terrible disgrace.π∂ López was perhaps hedging her bets by both denying that she had insulted Martín—essentially giving him the lie—and at the same time acknowledging Martín’s good reputation—a humbling retreat if she had indeed insulted him. Rather than deny the charges, many suspects simply ‘‘confessed that

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it was so’’ when confronted with the evidence against them. Why would a suspect admit guilt? Setting aside any consideration of conscience, we must take the coercive nature of the criminal process into account. By the time the lieutenants of the fiel del juzgado questioned the suspect, he or she had already been under arrest for a few days and taken from Yébenes to Toledo to wait in the prison of the Santa Hermandad. Back in Yébenes the justicia had seized the suspect’s goods, and prisoners had to pay for their own food and other necessities. Imprisonment at one’s own expense put great pressure on the suspect to end the process as soon as possible. If the suspect prolonged the process by hiring a lawyer and fighting the accusations, more money would be spent. In practice all but those accused of the most serious crimes could expect to receive a reasonably light sentence, so the most logical thing to do, it may have seemed, was to get the ordeal over with as quickly as possible, pay one’s fine, and go home. Those who had received a private pardon from their opponents, releasing them from the possibility of corporal punishment, often took this route as well.π∑ Furthermore, even those who did not confess to being guilty were treated much the same as those who did. The fiel del juzgado made his decision after reading the transcript of the investigation written in Yébenes, whose purpose was to prove that the suspect was guilty, and those who protested their innocence rarely convinced the judge. Instead, they received the same moderate punishment as those who confessed, only after spending more time in jail. The most common outcome for those cases that were remitted to the fiel del juzgado was the imposition of a moderate fine and a warning about future behavior. The fiel del juzgado received the report of the investigation from Yébenes, mainly consisting of narratives from witnesses testifying to the culpability of the suspect and sometimes little evidence in the suspect’s defense. There was often either a pledge of reconciliation or a private pardon from the aggrieved party, or both, all of which would urge leniency for the suspect. Even the law manuals advised discretion and not too much rigor. Pradilla Barnuevo suggested that even in cases of homicide the judge should look for mitigating factors, such as the suspect employing fists or cudgels as weapons, which would indicate that the suspect had no intention of killing his victim. Self-defense was also an excuse for leniency, as were other special circumstances including the suspect having found his wife, daughter, or sister with a man.π∏ From

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the point of view of the fiel del juzgado, an important and busy o≈cial who had many other responsibilities besides overseeing the criminal justice system of the Montes de Toledo, it probably seemed easiest to impose a fine, order the accused to keep the peace, and move on. The fines were commonly between two hundred and six hundred maravedís, and since it has been estimated that a poor man was getting by on thirty maravedís a day in the 1620s, the fine would have represented between one and three weeks’ cost of living for the poorer suspects and a correspondingly lighter burden for more prosperous individuals.ππ The warnings issued sometimes stipulated further punishments to be imposed if the suspects broke the terms of the reconciliation. Sometimes the fiel del juzgado spelled out specific consequences for breaking the peace, such as being exiled from Yébenes or being sent to row in the king’s fleet of galleys on the Mediterranean, but more often they were general, merely saying that the accused would be ‘‘punished according to the full severity of the law.’’π∫ If Pradilla Barnuevo helped judges search for ways to lessen the punishment of a suspect, Villadiego was even more forgiving: he advised that in relatively unimportant cases, if the accused maintained his or her innocence, the judge should simply let the accused go free.πΩ This outcome was also common in the court of the fiel del juzgado. In addition, many cases seem to have had no action taken on them after being remitted to the fiel del juzgado. In most of these cases, it is unclear why this was so. Some of the files do not even include the order by the alcaldes in Yébenes remitting the case to Toledo, so it is possible that the remaining paperwork has been lost. And in instances where the suspects could not be found, the fiel del juzgado often seemed unwilling to pursue the case further unless an arrest was made. But for most of these incomplete cases, the best explanation for why the judge took no further action was probably just that the crime was too inconsequential, or perhaps that it was too di≈cult to determine the truth of the charges solely from witness depositions. Cases that were unimportant included those in which threats were made and words exchanged but no physical violence was committed, especially when the opponents reconciled on their own. For example, Francisco Delgado, a scribe, brought suit against Christobal García in 1633 for putting his hand on his dagger and threatening to kill Delgado and another scribe, calling them both shameless and saying they had acted poorly in their duties. Other witnesses claimed that there was no

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dagger involved and they were separated before any combat broke out. Further, the two opponents claimed now to be friends. Although the alcaldes made an investigation and sent the summary to Toledo, as was their duty, the fiel del juzgado did nothing.∫≠ On occasion, the fiel del juzgado explained why he was dropping the case, usually because of the poverty of the accused and sometimes because of the trifling nature of the crime. Another possible explanation for the lack of prosecution was bribery, although it stands to reason that any attempts at bribing one’s way out of trouble would more likely have been directed toward the alcaldes in Yébenes, who were less wealthy than the fiel del juzgado and more susceptible to the pull of personal ties.∫∞ The use of fianzas (bonds or sureties) was another option at the disposal of the fiel del juzgado. Technically, suspects who had been bonded did not escape fines or other sanctions, as the fianza was meant solely to allow the suspect to leave jail and return home. A guarantor put up the money or property as a pledge that would be lost if the suspect did not return to hear the sentence and pay the fine. Receiving a fianza was more than just a convenience, however, because suspects could return to Yébenes, go back to work, and retrieve their sequestered goods. Fianzas ended the coercive aspects of the criminal investigation because they removed any further incentive to acknowledge criminal behavior and took the suspect out of the immediate control of the fiel del juzgado. Like private pardons, fianzas also placed restraints on the future behavior of the accused by putting the suspect into the obligation of another member of the community. As a patron who was answerable for the suspect’s conduct, it is not hard to believe that the guarantor, often a family member, exercised some influence on the suspect. Also like the private pardon, fianzas eased the fiel del juzgado’s burden by placing the responsibilities for enforcing decisions partly into the hands of others. Villadiego advised judges to release suspects with fianzas in all cases except those involving capital o√enses.∫≤ Castillo de Bobadilla urged judges in many cases to warn and scold suspects rather than punish with the full severity of the law.∫≥ What did bringing a criminal case against an opponent achieve? The fiel del juzgado’s powers were arbitrary and not easily answerable to a higher authority, but his decisions were predictable, more or less, to those who came under his power, and those decisions were completely depen-

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dent on the information he received from Yébenes residents. The worst part of the punishment for most suspects would have been the disruption, fear, and economic loss caused by being arrested, having one’s goods seized, and spending a few days or weeks in a jail in Toledo. Some of the suspects would have to agree to conditions imposed in return for apartamientos, and perhaps a fianza and suspended sentence would be added by the fiel del juzgado to enforce the peace. Others might end with a moderate fine and perhaps with the disgrace of having to take back what one had publicly said about one’s opponent. All the suspects would go through the humiliation of physical removal from Yébenes, incarceration, and the impoundment of their property, in full view of all their neighbors. The o√ended party, then, achieved a substantial measure of vengeance over an opponent simply by inducing the justicia of Yébenes to remit a case to the fiel del juzgado. More severe punishment awaited a minority of the suspects, usually those who assaulted or a√ronted members of the justicia while they were trying to enforce the law, those who attempted forcible rape of a virgin (called estupro in Castilian law), and those accused of adultery and living amancebado. Severe punishment was also sometimes meted out to those who were repeat o√enders. Exile, whippings, and labor in the galleys were the most common of the severe penalties, although the judge often suspended these harsh punishments so that they would take e√ect only if the culprit misbehaved again in the future. Suspended sentences were another means for the fiel del juzgado to try to control the future behavior of the accused. In 1630 Juan Despinar; his wife, Catalina Sánchez; and his father, Marcos Martín Despinar, were charged with continually fighting and disrupting the neighborhood. They were ordered not to pursue any more civil or criminal suits against each other and to keep the terms of a pledge of reconciliation and private pardon or else pay the substantial fine of ten thousand maravedís.∫∂ In the same year the fiel del juzgado sentenced Juan Carpio to one year of exile from Yébenes and a fine of one thousand maravedís for having insulted some alcaldes by swearing that they were ‘‘informers, cuckolds, and bastards.’’∫∑ The judge did not record his reasons for choosing the punishments he did, so the patterns of sentencing have to be deduced from the criminal archive. Not submitting a reason for the sentence was just one more way in which the fiel del

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juzgado exercised arbitrary powers. It would have been hard to argue against the judge’s decisions in the absence of any specific points that the condemned could refute. The last step in the judicial process was, for a very few cases, a formal trial. In 1628, there was an investigation into whether Antón Nieto had attacked Vicente de la Cruz, a constable of the fiel del juzgado who appeared in Yébenes to arrest someone. Allegedly, Nieto’s assault on the constable helped the person escape arrest. After the investigation was finished and Nieto had denied any responsibility for either the attack or the escape, the fiel del juzgado’s lieutenant, instead of issuing a summary judgment and sentence as was usual, ordered that Martín de Soria be appointed fiscal to the case.∫∏ A fiscal served as a prosecuting attorney on behalf of the fiel del juzgado, and Soria proceeded to carry on with a phase of the case called the probatorio.∫π In this stage, the accuser (or the fiscal if the case began de oficio, as in Nieto’s trial) and the accused each argued their side of the case through a series of documents that questioned all the evidence brought forth in the investigation and o√ered the opportunity to bring new evidence to bear. This stage was especially important for the suspect, who until this point had no opportunity to call witnesses or o√er any evidence of innocence except for the statement he or she made while being questioned in Toledo. Now the fiel del juzgado’s men drew up a set of questions to be asked of witnesses, and both the accuser and accused could add questions if they wished. In addition, all the witnesses who gave testimony during the investigation had their depositions read back to them and were asked under oath to ratify what they had said earlier. This last stage of the criminal judicial process was the only part of the case in which the accuser and accused could debate the merits of their case before the judge on anything like an equal basis, and it could last for days or weeks. For this reason, suspects appointed their own lawyer. In this case, Nieto chose Gaspar Ramírez, a procurador (solicitor) living in Toledo who advised many Yébenes residents who came under the fiel del juzgado’s scrutiny. Ramírez arranged for Nieto to be released on bond, just as he always attempted to do for the suspects he represented during the long process of a formal trial. Why did some cases reach this final stage of the judicial process, and why were there so few that did? The records o√er no hint as to how the decision to hold a formal trial was made. In this case, Nieto was eventually

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found not guilty and released, so perhaps he requested the trial to clear his name. It may be that he asked for a trial rather than consent to a summary sentence, which might have been severe given that he stood accused of assaulting a constable. Or perhaps the fiel del juzgado himself was dissatisfied with the evidence at his disposal in some cases and ordered the more formal process of the trial to ascertain the truth of the matter. Early modern Spanish jurists wrote as though the formal trial was an integral part of every criminal case, but in practice this was far from true, at least in Yébenes. Unfortunately, the archival records o√er no clues to explain why so few cases from Yébenes went to trial or what the di√erence might have been between those that did and those that did not. Like all the other stages of a case, the formal trial was partly controlled by the fiel del juzgado and his o≈cials and partly controlled by the residents of Yébenes. The adversarial nature of the trial, its dependence on the testimony of members of the community for almost all of its evidence, and the focus of that testimony on the reputations of the disputants are qualities that resonated throughout the entire criminal process. The interdependence of judge and judged persisted both within the investigation, as disputants gave depositions, called witnesses, and pursued suits, and outside of it, as they made pledges of reconciliation, granted private pardons, and either chose to cooperate with the investigation, fled, or resisted the authorities. Neither the authorities nor the disputants could act alone, without reference to each other, after the investigation began. While the authorities were not dependent on the accuser’s consent in deciding whether to pursue cases and punish suspects or to let them go, they tended to respond to the desires of the accusers. In addition, apartamientos, fees de amistades, quick decision making, moderate fines, and release on fianza worked to the benefit of the accused, if he or she could win these concessions from the planti√ and judge. Incorporating private pardons into their sentences, releasing suspects on sureties, and basing judgments on witnesses’ assessments of the disputants’ characters were all ways in which the authorities worked within a framework erected by the opponents they refereed. Describing the chief responsibility of a judge, Salgado Correa explained that ‘‘the safekeeping of the town and the service of God and of the prince consists principally in the peace, harmony, and calm of the residents.’’∫∫ By ratifying the process and judgment of the opponents and witnesses, the fiel del juzgado seems to have made

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decisions that were indeed meant to encourage peace, harmony, and calm in Yébenes. For a small minority of cases, in Yébenes and throughout Castile, the sentence handed down by the judge was not the final word. Criminal cases, like civil cases, could be appealed to the royal chancery. Yébenes, like the rest of southern Castile, was in the jurisdiction of the Chancery of Granada, while other parts of Castile had other chancery courts to which to appeal. A more rare way to have one’s punishment dismissed in early modern Spain was to receive a royal pardon for one’s crime. While lesser crimes might qualify for general pardons, usually after a payment by the convicted person to the king, the Good Friday Pardons were free gifts of the king’s grace and were supposed to depend on the merits of the case. The first condition for obtaining a Good Friday Pardon was that the convict had to have commited a serious crime, usually homicide, and had to have been dealt a correspondingly serious punishment, such as death, exile, or service either in the galleys of the fleet or as a soldier in the king’s fortresses on the coast of north Africa.∫Ω Lesser punishments were thought not to need pardons. Second, the convict had to stay alive—thus, in cases where the convict had been sentenced to death, he or she often fled and was pardoned in absentia. Third, the convict had to receive a private pardon from the aggrieved party. These pardons were not as easy to come by as the private pardons granted in Yébenes for assault and a√ronts, since they usually had to come from the widow, parents, or children of a dead person. In the cases that eventually led to Good Friday Pardons, private pardons normally came with conditions such as the payment of money and voluntary exile from the location where the crime occurred. Fourth, the convicted person had to have some kind of patron who could present the appeal for a royal pardon to the Cámara de Castilla in Madrid. In fact, the Siete partidas explicitly refers to the influence of ‘‘honorable’’ men in obtaining royal pardons.Ω≠ The Cámara de Castilla was a small council that had split o√ from the Royal Council of Castile. It was chiefly responsible for dispensing patronage, including assigning candidates to posts as judges and prosecuting attorneys, but granting Good Friday Pardons was another of its responsibilities.Ω∞ Some of those pardoned were in fact noblemen who would have had their own connections to the court and members of the Cámara. Finally, the convicted person had to have a justifiable reason for a

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pardon. The reasons given were usually that the act had been committed in self-defense or that the victim had acted in an outrageously provocative manner. Service to the king, usually as a soldier, was also cited sometimes, as was the social status of the convict. Pardon seekers contrasted their characters favorably with those of their victims, and they also evoked the existence of dependent children and other family members as an extenuating circumstance. The justifications were usually implicit in the case records, but sometimes they were drawn up and argued in a separate document, similar to the ‘‘pardon tale’’ used to request royal pardons in early modern France.Ω≤ These supplications tended to be less detailed than those in France, probably because the merits of the case were inherent in the records of the judicial investigation and formal trial, if there was one, which the Cámara reviewed and included in the paperwork attached to the Good Friday Pardon. Royal pardons represented a merciful act by the king—just the kind of dramatic act portrayed in the honor plays. But the recipients of actual Good Friday Pardons received a complete legal vindication for their acts, unlike the ambiguous rulings of the kings on stage, and of course they received them from the royal bureaucracy instead of from the mouth of the king himself.

conclusion The fiel del juzgado could take satisfaction from fulfilling his obligation to keep the peace, punish wrongdoers, and defend the wronged. The decisions he handed down were represented by pages, often dozens of them, written by scribes in Toledo and Yébenes and then sewn together, creating a tidy physical representation of a problem solved. As the fiel del juzgado signed the final decision, he could feel that he had mostly conformed to the letter of the law and the advice of the jurists (although usually with a summary judgment instead of a full trial) and had restored the king’s peace to Yébenes. And from the point of view of the plainti√, the criminal justice system often worked to achieve all the goals that he or she had wanted to achieve during the initial confrontation: a vindication of one’s reputation, and either a satisfactory settlement or vengeance. These were the same goals that the duel was designed to achieve and that the residents of Yébenes sought when they employed the rhetoric of honor. While o≈cially the fiel del juzgado judged his inferiors and represented the king, in practice the residents of Yébenes—even women—used the fiel del

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juzgado’s courts to achieve their own ends. If the kings on the Golden Age stage sometimes found themselves in a position where all they could do was ratify and temper the violent revenge achieved by the other characters, their position was not so di√erent from the real king’s representatives in Toledo. One question remains: how unique was this process to Spain? Was it just the Castilian criminal system that allowed for such manipulation by its subjects, or did this relationship between judges and judged exist elsewhere in early modern Europe? Clearly, throughout Europe witnesses and the accused tried to sway judges with their own version of events, as Natalie Zemon Davis has shown for sixteenth-century France.Ω≥ But this is probably true of all law courts everywhere and at all times. More significantly, historians who study civil cases in early modern and medieval Europe have shown that litigants were savvy about how the courts worked and exercised a great deal of influence over the proceedings. Daniel Smail has detailed how the residents of late medieval Marseille used civil courts to achieve private vengeance against their enemies, and Laura Gowing has found women doing the same thing with church courts in early modern London, manipulating court proceedings with their testimony.Ω∂ As in Castile, civil suits and other court cases were likely to be just one strategic move within a larger framework of conflict that opponents were able to escalate or reconcile using legal and extrajudicial tactics, as J. A. Sharpe has found in early modern England.Ω∑ These studies concern civil and church courts, however, where private complaints were the normal means of triggering a suit. But even in criminal courts, where we might expect to see the judicial authorities exercising more control over the proceedings, historians have discovered that cases were open to a great deal of influence by the non-elite. The idea that public justice could accomplish private vengeance was not unique to the jurists of Golden Age Castile. Paul Hyams argues that in early medieval England, law did not replace the private vengeance of feuding; rather, they were two sides of the same coin. Similarly William Ian Miller has shown that in medieval Iceland, ‘‘going to law did not mean forgoing revenge. . . . It was often a sensible way of going about it.’’Ω∏ We might dismiss this evidence, believing that medieval Iceland was a savage place and that its justice was rough, but Cynthia Herrup has found similar evidence in seventeenthcentury England. Control of criminal cases was shared between the o≈-

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cials—mostly amateurs, as in Castile—and the people involved.Ωπ Indeed the trend in early modern historiography, as James Farr has pointed out, is to see honor and the law as intertwined. Further, the law was not always something imposed from above on European non-elites but rather was ‘‘simultaneously enabling and constraining.’’Ω∫ Even small details of behavior that the Yébenes cases and Good Friday Pardons reveal have counterparts in other regions of Europe. For example, women participated in the law, even though they had no formal right to do so; a ritual of grasping hands could end a conflict in the Netherlands; and constables in England found themselves as beleaguered intermediaries between their superiors and the people they were meant to oversee.ΩΩ Not just in Castile but throughout Europe, we should view criminal law as a hybrid—both a way for elites to discipline their inferiors and a resource for people seeking vengeance.

chapter 4

Men

in the opening to calderón’s The Painter of His Dishonor, Don Juan Roca contemplates his fate as he searches for the man who has abducted his wife, Serafina: Curse him, indeed, who first made such a severe law! How little did he understand honor the tyrannous lawmaker who put in another’s hand my reputation, and not in my own. That my honor is subject to another, and that (oh, treacherous, unjust law!) the injury should belong to him who weeps over it, and not to him who commits it! My fame has been honorable— is it an accomplice to evil and not to good? Curse him, yes, who first made such a severe law! Honor which is born mine, now a slave to another? Not that. That I should condemn myself

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for another’s whim! What barbarous world consents to this infamous rite? Where there is no blame, there is a crime? Where another is delinquent, for his insulting malice, they give the punishment to me! Curse him, yes, who first made such a severe law! Of all those whom the world notices as unhappy—ay me! Will there be another more so than me?∞ This excerpt shows Don Juan explaining the fulcrum on which the entire play rests—that one’s honor depends on the behavior of others. In this case, Don Juan is unsure whether his wife’s abduction was real or was staged with her complicity. More generally, wives and female kin had to maintain their sexual purity and even their reputation for sexual purity or else disgrace the husbands, fathers, and brothers who were meant to control and protect ‘‘their’’ women. The only possible solution to a stain on sexual honor was bloody revenge, and Don Juan takes his—mistakenly —when he stumbles upon Serafina with her abductor, Don Álvaro. While searching for his wife, Don Juan takes up painting and is hired by a third man, the Prince of Orsino, who also loves the beautiful Serafina, to secretly paint her portrait in the hideout where Don Álvaro is keeping her. Since being kidnapped, Serafina has fought o√ Don Álvaro’s advances, but just as Don Juan discovers the identity of the lady he is to paint (from his own secluded vantage point) she awakes from a nightmare and goes to Don Álvaro’s arms for the first time. Witnessing what he takes to be their a√ection, he assumes that Serafina had consented to being abducted and takes his revenge by killing both her and Don Álvaro.≤ The Painter of His Dishonor is just one of several Golden Age dramas that feature powerful enactments of the relationship between male honor and female sexuality. Peribáñez and the Commander of Ocaña, Fuenteovejuna, and The Best Alcalde, the King (El mejor alcalde, el rey), all by Lope de Vega, feature a man who must prevent or avenge the rape of a woman close to him. Calderón’s The Alcalde of Zalamea (discussed in the previous chapter) also features a

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man taking vengeance for a disgraced woman, his daughter. In addition, there were the wife-murder plays, including The Physician of His Honor and Secret Insult, Secret Vengeance, both by Calderón, and Lope de Vega’s Punishment without Vengeance.≥ Grave o√enses such as rape and adultery were not even strictly necessary for an o√ended man to take revenge. In Punishment without Vengeance, the protagonist, the Duke of Ferrara, is not completely sure whether his wife, Casandra, is having an a√air with his son, Don Federico. But he feels that the mere rumor of her infidelity is too much of a threat to bear, so he orchestrates the deaths of his wife and son to save his honor.∂ Judging from the honor plays, in Golden Age Castile the sexual purity of women was the only important component of male honor, and the only way to avenge dishonor related to this purity was with violence. Moreover, the work of modern anthropologists has reinforced this interpretation of honor in Spain.∑ Nevertheless, the criminal cases from Yébenes and the Good Friday Pardons paint a di√erent picture. For example, consider the misadventures of one man from Yébenes, Juan Camacho, between 1609 and 1618. During this period the justicia of Yébenes and the fiel del juzgado opened eight separate criminal cases against Camacho, a tailor of some substance who was literate enough to sign his name to legal depositions.∏ One night in March 1609 Camacho resisted the alcaldes of Yébenes as they tried to take his sword from him because it was nighttime. Camacho fled, later claiming that he had not known that the men approaching him were o≈cials, and escaped arrest. Three years later in March 1612, the fiel del juzgado learned that the tailor had been involved one month earlier in a criminal matter that the Yébenes justicia had neglected to prosecute. This time Camacho was said to have quarreled with his brother-in-law, Juan López, resulting in a sword fight between the two. A few months later in July, Camacho was again found to have been in violent confrontation with his in-laws. He had entered the house of Francisco Moreno, another of his brothers-in-law, and allegedly kicked and slapped María Juárez, sister-in-law to both Camacho and Moreno, calling her ‘‘buggered’’ or ‘‘screwed’’ (‘‘hodida’’). Witnesses who were in the house reported that Moreno stopped Camacho and asked him politely to leave. Olalla Jiménez, Moreno’s wife and Camacho’s sister, also spoke with Camacho to try to calm him. When Camacho put his hand on his sister’s arm, Moreno warned him against it; Camacho ignored him, and

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the two men fought. Although there is no record of it, apparently Camacho had another encounter with the justicia of Yébenes in which they forced him to surrender his sword. A new case began in August, when Camacho was living in the church and its cemetery, seeking refuge from the judicial authorities. One night during this time an alcalde, Diego de Palaçios, encountered him at the cemetery. The investigation began with an accusation that Camacho had accosted Palaçios, saying, ‘‘I swear to Christ that I will make him pay money for having taken away my arms.’’π According to one witness, Palaçios explained that he had taken his weapons only to avoid an incident, but Camacho responded with threats and insults until the alcalde left, saying, among other things, ‘‘Although they have taken my sword from me I still have bricks,’’ gesturing with the bricks in his hand, and ‘‘I swear to Christ that the justicia are bellacos cabritos who wanted to remove me from the sanctuary, and I swear to God that if those buggering screwed cabritos bellacos came for me I would have to kill them.’’∫ Cabrito, literally meaning a young goat, could mean ridiculously boastful, proud, and vain, like a goat kid trying to act as a mature billy goat, or it could mean cuckold.Ω In September Camacho was still living in the churchyard, and a new case opened against him for having called King Philip IV of Spain a sodomite.∞≠ A few days later, Camacho was in trouble again for having attacked Diego Rodríguez de Figueroa, a scribe, after Rodríguez de Figueroa refused to pay thirty reales that Camacho said he owed him. The scribe denied owing Camacho any money. There was a pause in the criminal proceedings for a year and a half until May 1614, when Gabriel Guerrero, a surgeon, brought a criminal complaint against Camacho, complaining that he had called Guerrero a cuckold and a Jew in a tavern ‘‘with the intention of ruining my good reputation.’’∞∞ And finally in 1618 the fiel del juzgado investigated Camacho for breaking the terms of the exile from Yébenes that it had previously imposed on him. Thanks to Camacho’s flair for finding di√erent ways of getting into trouble, his discreditable adventures provide a good starting point for illustrating the underlying components of honor and reputation that led to male violence in early modern Castile. Male honor did concern the protection of women’s sexual conduct—and vengeance for dishonor involving that conduct—but Juan Camacho, and other men whose interpersonal disputes left traces in the records of the fiel del juzgado and the

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Good Friday Pardons, shows that a much broader range of causes also triggered violence and the invocation of honor. The protection of one’s family in general (not solely the sexual reputation of women kin), the maintenance of one’s credit and property, the defense of one’s o≈ce and status, and the competitive nature of early modern male sociability all impinged on male honor. Above all, men needed to be seen performing these roles e√ectively before their neighbors. As the behavior of Juan Camacho between 1609 and 1618 demonstrated, failure to live up to these standards often led men to use the rhetoric of honor, including employing elements of the duel, both to attack the reputations of others and to defend their own.

honor and the christian gentleman Christian moralists o√ered a critique of the manners of early modern Spanish men, joining criminal records and the Golden Age stage as sources for commentary on correct male behavior. All Christian moralists tended to attack the code of honor as depicted in the honor plays, but they approached the issue from di√erent angles. On the moderate end of the spectrum, populated mainly by the authors of confessor’s manuals, moralists tried to reshape the conception of honor. Their goal was to replace the passionate, reputation-obsessed men who sought violent vengeance for all slights with virtuous Christian gentlemen. The more radical end of the spectrum, inhabited by writers working in the tradition of Christian asceticism, rejected honor altogether and condemned the concerns for reputation that prompted anger and vengeance. Like anti-dueling writers, moralists throughout the spectrum tried to shift the idea of honor from vengeance to virtue. They also argued that men should focus on their relationship with God. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a torrent of books published on Christian themes, especially devotional tracts and confessor’s manuals. These genres had their origins in the Middle Ages and earlier, but now they reflected the influence of Christian humanism, with its insistence on inward spirituality, and of the Catholic Reformation, with its attempt to teach correct Catholic doctrine to clergy and laypeople alike. Above all, Christian writers emphasized the moral perfectibility of each individual and stressed the role of self-discipline in achieving morality, especially sexual morality.∞≤ Confessor’s manuals posed as guides to the

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clergymen who would hear the confessions of laypeople, and their purpose was to provide a list of questions to ask the penitents and to suggest proper punishments for each type of sin. Normally written in Spanish rather than in more learned yet less accessible Latin, they also aimed to help laypeople who desired aid examining their consciences.∞≥ The manuals targeted specific audiences, listing the sins imagined to be most common for each type of person: noblemen, priests, married women, unmarried young women, and so on. Typically they used the Ten Commandments and the seven deadly sins, among other catalogues of misdeeds, as a framework to help penitents and confessors identify transgressions. Although it is not clear how much real influence these manuals had, and although they relied heavily on earlier, medieval manuals, religious writers of the Golden Age did tailor the manuals to their own concerns, and they can therefore o√er insight into the thinking of the ecclesiastical elite who produced them, providing information on the chief dangers that the clergy saw threatening sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Spaniards.∞∂ The genre of Spanish confessor’s manuals emerged in the thirteenth century with the work of Raymond de Peñafort, a Catalan. The most popular and influential Castilian manuals from the Golden Age were Pedro Ciruelo’s The Art of Confessing Well (Arte de bien confesar), first published in 1514, and Martín de Azpilcueta Navarro’s Manual for Confessors and Penitents (Manual de confesores y penitentes, 1554). Others include Juan Arias Castillo’s The Doctrine of Confessors (Tratado que se llama doctrinal de confesores, 1552), Domingo de Valera’s Confessionario (1555), Francisco Ortiz Lucio’s Suma of Sumas (1595), and the Jesuit Antonio de Escobar y Mendoza’s Examination and Practice of Confessors and Penitents (Examen y práctica de confessores y penitentes, 1560). Also popular was the Moral Writings (Obras morales), a Castilian translation of the works of the influential Portuguese Franciscan Manuel Rodrígues, including a confessor’s manual. There were many editions of the Moral Writings, but one of the earliest dates from 1601–2. Other important Christian writings that dealt with the problems of honor include Francisco de Osuna’s Compass for All Estates (Norte de todos los estados, 1531), Luis de Granada’s Book of Prayer and Meditation (Libro de oración y meditación, 1544) and Guide for Sinners (Guía de pecadores, 1556), Luis de la Puente’s Treatise on the Perfection of All Estates (Tratado de la perfeción en todos los estados, 1612), and Juan

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de Soto’s Obligations of All the Estates (Obligaciones de todos los estados, 1619). Another ethical work that can shed light on the opinions of the elite toward men and honor is the Portuguese immigrant Antonio López de Vega’s The Perfect Gentleman (El perfecto señor), first published in 1626 and expanded and reissued in 1652 and 1663.∞∑ Taken together, moralizing critics attacked honor and the duel in two ways. First, they o√ered Christian virtue as an alternative to vengeance, and second, they recognized that the issues that led to dueling, revenge, and violence encompassed much more than just sexual fidelity. As would be expected from a group of writers who aimed to be encyclopedic in their advice, moralists addressed honor and vengeance explicitly. In his Homilies on the Gospels (Homilías sobre los evangelios, 1621), Jerónimo Batista de Lanuza wrote a sermon for the first day of Lent on loving one’s enemies. This commandment had been forgotten, he explained, since it went against the natural instinct to preserve one’s life and was thus the hardest to obey. He argued that this was the case ‘‘especially in Spain, where thanks to the valor of noble hearts and souls . . . [honor] has such a great place that anything that appears to them crucial for preserving honor and esteem is one of the things in Spain that carry o√ a great many souls to Hell.’’∞∏ A few moralists excused violence caused by a concern for honor, such as Martín de Azpilcueta Navarro. In his Manual for Confessors and Penitents, Azpilcueta Navarro was careful to forbid avenging a dishonor after it had been committed but did permit a man to fight and even kill rather than flee if that would mean losing honor. He even allowed a man to fight and kill to avoid being slapped.∞π Most Christian writers, however, did not see honor as a valid justification for violence. In his Book of Prayer and Meditation, Luis de Granada asked the Christian man to ‘‘consider how hard you are toward your neighbor and how merciful to yourself when you are a friend of your own will and of your flesh, your honor, and your interests.’’ ‘‘Moreover,’’ he continued, ‘‘for what reason do you sin? For a point of honor, for a bestial pleasure, for a hair’s breadth of interest, and for other things of the air.’’∞∫ By linking honor to base desires and selfishness, Luis de Granada echoed a common theme among Christian literature. Citing Aristotle, the anti-dueling writer Jerónimo de Urrea explained how if one cannot remain calm when a√ronted, he will be moved to fury ( furor), which will begin to corrupt the heart, eventually leaving revenge as the only cure. The result of delibera-

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tion rather than an unthinking reflex to the a√ront as it occurred, this vengeance would be grave crime.∞Ω Pedro Ciruelo also linked a desire for vengeance with rage (ira), an emotion that had a moral component as one of the seven deadly sins but also had a physiological aspect, since it boils and inflames the blood, disturbing reason in a man so a√ected.≤≠ Luis de la Puente agreed in his Treatise on the Perfection of All Estates, writing that the enraged passion for vengeance, which did not su√er any injury, no matter how small, ‘‘rides a pale horse, threatening terrible retribution, and its name is death, because it does not wish to spare the life of even one o√ender, and its servant is Hell, because of its rabid desire to send there all who wrong him, in order to take eternal vengeance.’’≤∞ The moralists also attacked gossip and lying, usually under the rubric of not bearing false witness, and scorn and disdain, since they caused a√ronts and provoked revenge.≤≤ Taken together, the Christian literature articulated a detailed analysis of the workings of a√ronts, rage, and revenge, and condemned them as sinful and—because they were irrational—unmanly and even inhumane. Another common point made by Ciruelo and others was that to truly serve God a man should forgo vengeance and pardon his neighbor for any o√ense.≤≥ Here Ciruelo helped construct a vision of a perfect Christian gentleman, one who strove to live by the two principles of virtue and courtesy. Writers against the duel asserted that Christian virtue is true honor and made this the cornerstone of their attack against dueling. Like Ciruelo, many anti-dueling writers praised the Christlike pardoning of o√enses as the chief virtue that should guide would-be duelists. Virtue and courtesy were not simply general commandments but were specifically directed toward men. Artal de Alagón explained that true nobility means belonging not to a titled family but to the ‘‘Christian family.’’ The inheritance of nobility is virtue, he argued, and a man’s true challenge is not to increase his earthly estate but to perform Christian deeds like keeping chastity in order to enlarge his moral inheritance. To do otherwise was ‘‘e√eminate.’’≤∂ This vision of manhood was markedly di√erent from that o√ered by the honor plays. In A Historical and Political Book: Only Madrid Is the Court and the Courtier Is Only in Madrid (Libro histórico político: Sólo Madrid es corte y el cortesano en Madrid, 1658), Alonso Núñez de Castro added courtesy to Christian morality as a virtue that makes a gentleman: ‘‘A señor with his hat in his hand gains a crown for his head.’’≤∑ Núñez de

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Castro’s idea of honor was based on relationships. Showing honor to another man put that man in one’s debt, whether he was a superior or an inferior, and obligated him to return the honor. Courtesy ensured that one would be honored, and courtesy safeguarded the proper relationship between men in a well-ordered state. After all, Núñez de Castro asked, what is hell but a place where disorder reigns, ‘‘a republic of discourtesy,’’ as opposed to heaven, whose residents all act with courtesy and maintain the proper hierarchy between God and His creatures?≤∏ Ciruelo agreed, for in his discussion of the commandment to honor one’s mother and father, he added a general statement about honor: while speaking, one must ‘‘keep all courtesy and mildness,’’ and while serving others, one must ‘‘maintain total obedience and prompt execution of those things they command of us.’’≤π Finally, Núñez de Castro cited Aristotle and Plutarch to demonstrate that courtesy is what separates men from beasts.≤∫ Núñez de Castro’s explanation of courtesy fits in well with the moralists’ diagnosis of rage and the path it opens to vengeance. A true Christian gentleman would restrain his passions with courtesy, not letting his own self-interest and pride overwhelm him and pardoning others instead of seeking vengeance, thus creating good relations with others, who honor him in turn. In the honor plays, honor appears as both an unyielding set of laws that determine the characters’ behavior and a reified possession that could be lost or won. In The Painter of His Dishonor, Don Juan Roca sees honor as a precious commodity that he believes he has lost thanks to his wife’s abduction by Don Álvaro. He feels compelled by the structure of the honor code to take bloody revenge for his dishonor, even though he realizes, as he explains to himself in his soliloquy, that all the fault belongs to others and not to him. The impulse that leads Don Juan to murder his wife is based on reciprocity—his honor is a possession that has been taken from him, regardless of the true virtues of the situation (Serafina has been loyal to him), and revenge can restore it back to him. Christian moralists saw honor di√erently, in terms of relationships, hierarchy, and emotion. Acting honorably meant treating others with proper respect, and social rank dictated the appropriate way to display that respect: one should treat a superior di√erently than an equal or inferior. A√ronts and revenge, pardoning and love were the kind of emotions and actions the moralists focused on, and none of these emotions would make sense as abstractions. They came to life only when people interacted. In their goal to

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induce men to act as Christian gentlemen, moralists tried to persuade men to think not just of themselves and their interests but also of others— one’s neighbors, in the language of the Ten Commandments. To encourage this behavior, they inserted another strand into the web of personal relationships that encircled every man: his relationship with God. ‘‘The First Commandment is to honor God,’’ Luis de Granada reminded his readers.≤Ω ‘‘But what manner of faith does he have who lives so wantonly as if he believed that everything that faith preaches was a lie? What charity would he possess who loved a tiny point of honor, and a single straw of interest, and the filth of pleasure more than he loved God Himself, for with each one of those things he scorned and insulted Him?’’≥≠ Scorning and insulting other men with the rhetoric of honor was one thing, but scorning and insulting God was another, Luis de Granada reminded Spanish men. How many times have you sinned, he asked, ‘‘solely in order to slight God?’’≥∞ Bastista de Lanuza concurred, explaining that honoring God and pardoning the o√enses of other men was the law of the Republic of God, and ‘‘thus he must honor and maintain it, whoever lives in it.’’≥≤ Men must be good vassals to their lord, God, and do what He orders, since God has given them so much, he argued. ‘‘There is no king nor lord so vile that at least his vassals and the henchmen of his house do not value him and honor his livery, and obey what he commands.’’≥≥ In other words, since one would be ashamed to dishonor one’s earthly lord, why not one’s true, spiritual Lord? And what does God command? To love one’s neighbor and to eschew vengeance.≥∂ Christian moralists recognized the hold that honor had on Castilian men. While anti-dueling writers simply tried to persuade their audience to rethink honor as Christian virtue, writers of spiritual treatises and confessor’s manuals bent the rhetoric of honor toward God: honoring God meant putting aside selfinterest and pardoning insults instead of avenging them. Their aim was to persuade the reader to forget his concerns for where he fit into the earthly hierarchy of his peers, superiors, and inferiors and to stop obsessing over what type of treatment he should accept from each grade. His relationship with God was to supplant his relationship with his neighbors. At the most radical end of the spectrum, ascetic writers such as Luis de Granada were more honest about the di≈culty of setting aside concerns for honor, and they acknowledged that the real alternative to the rhetoric of honor was not simply virtue but the much more rigorous,

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nearly unattainable ideal of self-denial and ‘‘death to the world,’’ as the centuries-old tradition of Christian asceticism put it. In his Guide for Sinners, Luis de Granada explained that a Christian must mortify his passions and make war against his appetites, especially ‘‘the desires for honor, for physical pleasures and for temporal goods.’’≥∑ In the Book of Prayer and Meditation, he counseled the loathing and rejection of one’s self: ‘‘Particularly, through here is gained the abandonment of the self, which requires not only fleeing the comforts of the body, and seeking out its labors, but much more to despise every dignity and honor of the world, and to love every slight and dishonor. And this disposition properly belongs to humility, which is a profound scorn for one’s self, born of a true knowledge of oneself and of one’s sins.’’≥∏ Luis de Granada and the other Christian moralists recognized how engrained the rhetoric of honor was. Their vision of two di√erent men, the good one who loathes one’s self and pardons and the more common one who loves one’s self and seeks out every slight in order to avenge it, provided an articulation of the rhetoric of honor and its opposite that could fit not just for lofty problems of noblemen and adultery, as on the Golden Age stage, but for everyday problems of human relations.≥π As the criminal records show, this assessment of honor and its place in human relations more accurately reflected the experience of early modern Castilian life. Judging from the criminal records of the fiel del juzgado and the Good Friday Pardons, the rhetoric of honor was embedded in the social life of early modern Castile. Four broad categories emerge in which male reputation seemed to be most vulnerable in Yébenes, and in which, therefore, men found it useful to engage the rhetoric of honor, since after all the duel and its components were designed to resolve questions about character and slander. All four categories dealt with the quotidian, but vital, a√airs of men involved in their community in many ways—the rhetoric of honor was not just for the hidalgos and princes of the Golden Age stage. An element from all four categories makes an appearance in the criminal cases involving Juan Camacho. First, as the honor plays suggest, men had a responsibility to protect their families and their families’ reputations. Other men acted on this responsibility in response to Juan Camacho’s a√ronts—for example, his brother-in-law Francisco Moreno attacked Camacho when he put his hand on Moreno’s wife, and the surgeon Gabriel Guerrero brought suit against Camacho for calling him a Jew and a cuckold

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and smearing his family’s reputation. Second, matters involving credit, debt, money, and property factored into male reputation. Camacho raised these issues when he accused the scribe Rodríguez of owing him money, and Rodríguez responded in kind when he denied it, provoking Camacho to attack him. Third, issues of o≈ce, trade, and social status played a part in constituting reputation. Camacho’s bitter attacks on the alcaldes and constables of Yébenes in which he accused them of misusing their o≈ce were a√ronts designed to slander their reputation. Lastly, the competitive world of male sociability, with its aggressive games, jokes, and symbols of male reputation, continually put men’s reputations to the test. Their ability to perform well in the casual competitions that were constantly erupting among men, especially in the public arenas of the plaza, taverns, and festivals, was an important part of reputation—friendly competitions frequently spilled over into abuse and violence. Camacho’s conflicts with others often took place in the usual sites of male sociability, such as the church steps and cemetery where he insulted the alcalde Diego de Palaçios or the inn where he a√ronted the surgeon Guerrero. Together, a man’s performance in these four categories—family, credit and property, o≈ce and status, and male sociability—largely determined his reputation, at least as far as criminal records were concerned.≥∫ Camacho’s experience shows that these categories were not sharply defined or clearly di√erentiated one from the other, and that no category was more important than the others. The lines blurred between them— most of Camacho’s confrontations combined elements of two or more of these categories—and each category held precedence at di√erent times according to the progress of each dispute. At the same time, these various categories resist attempts to fold them together into one organizing scheme that could be said to constitute ‘‘masculinity.’’ Although male reputation depended on all these di√erent issues, Castilian men used the rhetoric of honor to present their reputations as a single, coherent, and unitary identity. To have a good reputation for men in Yébenes was to belong to a good, Old Christian family with no stain of sexual or racial impurity; to have a reputation for creditworthiness and prosperity; to fulfill one’s obligations in one’s trade or o≈ce and to uphold the expectations of the status to which one belonged; and to safeguard the symbols of manhood in the public competitions of male sociability that occurred while gambling, visiting taverns, attending church and festivals, and even

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simply greeting one another in the street. To threaten the reputation of a man in one of these areas was to throw doubt on all of them, because a man’s honor was thought to be indivisible. Men invested themselves in all of these areas, so they were vulnerable to threat in any of these areas.

protecting the family Two of the men who make appearances in the cases against Juan Camacho exemplify the male concern for defending members of one’s family and their reputations. Juan Moreno, Camacho’s brother-in-law, intervened cautiously to try to prevent Camacho from beating María Juárez, who was sister-in-law to both men. Moreno then acted more forcefully when he perceived a threat to his wife, Olalla Jiménez, attacking Camacho with a sword. Instead of physical threats, Gabriel Guerrero, the surgeon, was faced with Camacho’s attempt to slander his family’s reputation by calling him a cuckold and Jew. The words Camacho chose to hurl at his opponent slandered Guerrero’s entire family in a way they would not have had Camacho chosen an insult such as bellaco. Guerrero acknowledged in his complaint, as the fiel del juzgado’s lieutenants did in their questioning of Camacho, the broad implications of the a√ront by focusing on the damage done not just to Guerrero as an individual but to the reputation of his wife and family.≥Ω The vigorous responses of Moreno and Guerrero to Juan Camacho’s a√ronts show that at least part of a man’s reputation did in fact rest on his ability to defend female kin, their reputation for sexual purity, and the reputation of the family in general. Juan Moreno calibrated his response to threats based on the closeness of his relationship to the person under attack. He merely tried to calm Camacho down with words, telling him to ‘‘control himself,’’ when Camacho beat and insulted their sister-in-law, María Suarez. When Camacho placed his hand on Olalla Jiménez, Moreno’s wife and Camacho’s sister, who was also trying to calm Camacho, Moreno intensified his stance, according to a witness, telling him, ‘‘Do not put a hand on my wife or I will explode.’’ Camacho responded ‘‘brusquely,’’ the witness continued, that ‘‘he did not concur with those words.’’ Moreno answered back that ‘‘he did not know what word he had said other than responding to Camacho’s provocation,’’ then rushed at Camacho with his sword. Camacho su√ered an injury to his head in the ensuing scu∆e before onlookers could separate them.∂≠ Other men in Yébenes responded similarly to a√ronts to their

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wives, such as Francisco de la Cruz in 1615. As we saw in chapter 2, De la Cruz stood accused of shouting threats at some women who had allegedly insulted his own wife and putting his hand on his dagger to threaten one of the women and her husband, Lucas Fernández. (He denied everything.)∂∞ It did not even have to be one’s own wife whose reputation needed protecting; in 1633 Christobal García ran up to some men who were speaking to an (unnamed) married woman and challenged them all to a duel, claiming they were speaking to her in a provocative manner (‘‘bellacamente’’).∂≤ It was not just wives whom men in Yébenes felt an obligation to protect. As observed in chapter 3, Sebastián López was accused in 1623 of attacking a young woman named Ana, the daughter of the widow Catalina Gómez. Catalina Gómez claimed that López entered her house while she was away at Mass, striking her daughter with his fists and bloodying her face. When questioned, López explained that Ana had confronted his sister, María López, saying, ‘‘Please God let her not come over here, that scandalous bellaca.’’ Sebastián López admitted to telling her to ‘‘stop speaking badly to honorable women’’ and threatening to kill her when Ana subsequently attacked him, although he maintained that he did not touch her.∂≥ Whether López struck Ana or merely threatened her, he was motivated by a desire to defend his sister. Similar examples include Juan Pérez Oliva confronting a man in 1609 who had struck his aunt, and Pedro Garoz in 1620 protecting his daughter María Gómez when María Fernández attacked her.∂∂ Men also responded aggressively to threats and insults of a sexual nature to women in their families, just as in the honor plays. In 1624 Francisco Abad, a young man, was walking through the street at nightfall and politely asked the tailor Pedro Trebiño to ‘‘step aside, sir, and let me pass.’’ Trebiño’s response was to give Abad three or four blows to the back with either a cudgel or the flat of his sword. When questioned by the authorities, Trebiño confessed and explained that Abad was ‘‘angling to get married to a niece of his and was hanging around the street pestering her, even though she does not want to marry him.’’∂∑ Similarly, in 1633, Andrés Vélez accused Juan de Medina of coming to his house in a rage and complaining that Vélez had insulted Medina’s wife, María Gómez, by sending her away ‘‘inappropriately’’ or ‘‘unfavorably’’ when she had approached Vélez earlier to ask that he pay her a real for some shoes he had bought from her previously. Vélez denied having insulted her, and Me-

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dina attacked him with a sword, cutting him on the head. When questioned by the authorities, Medina said that he confronted Vélez because Vélez had mistreated his wife and had called her ‘‘shameless,’’ a sexually charged term that Vélez thought justified his anger, although he denied having wounded Vélez. (A surgeon testified that Vélez was in fact cut on the head.)∂∏ Evidence from the Good Friday Pardons suggests that the inclination to protect female relatives was widespread throughout Castile. In Andújar in 1621, Ana Mateo testified that two men came to her door and called her a bitch and said that they would ‘‘baste’’ (‘‘pringar’’) her, referring to a punishment given to slaves involving hot grease applied to the wounds sustained from a whipping. Her husband, Luis Gómez, told them not to speak to his wife that way and put his hand on his sword, which led to his death at the hands of the two men and their relatives who rushed to the scene.∂π Similarly, in 1623 witnesses related that Andrés Pérez de Rojas was walking down a street in Córdoba with his wife when another man approached them and ‘‘pulled his beard’’ at her. This gesture provoked Pérez de Rojas to curse and threaten the man, leading to a sword fight in which a bystander trying to make peace was killed.∂∫ These examples show men reacting to powerful tools taken from the rhetoric of honor and designed to shame their wives. The impulse of men to protect the women close to them even extended to mistresses and prostitutes. The sandal maker Miguel Sánchez was keeping María de Sigura as his lover in Murcia in 1631, a fact so public that even his wife acknowledged it. When Tomás de Porea made a joke at Sigura one day in the street, Sánchez rushed out of her house to threaten him with a beating if he did not leave her alone. Porea told the justicia that he explained to Sánchez that he was not insulting her, but Sánchez attacked anyway. Porea and three or four friends who were with him fought back and killed Sánchez.∂Ω In 1622 in Seville, according to a witness, Juan Ysidro, a servant at a brothel, taunted one of the prostitutes there, laughing and saying, ‘‘What a pretty drunk Manuela makes!’’ Manuela’s friend, nicknamed ‘‘La Sibra,’’ asked her why she let the servant call her a drunk, prodding Manuela to kick and hit the servant and, despite Ysidro’s protest that he was only joking, threaten to have her client Hernando de León kill him, saying that if he did not do so, she would no longer see him. She meant what she said; de León carried out her request that night.∑≠

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Other disputes arose over access to unattached women. In Toledo in 1628 Domingo Díaz was able to tell the following story to the justicia before he died from his wounds. Juan de la Cruz approached Díaz one day and questioned him about his dealings with Ana López, a hosier whom he had met several times at her stall. Díaz told de la Cruz that ‘‘this did not concern him,’’ and continued to visit López. De la Cruz continued to follow Díaz, however, and finally confronted him again at a site where a group of men were bowling and challenged Díaz to a duel. Although Díaz tried to refuse, de la Cruz attacked anyway and fatally wounded him.∑∞ For a man to speak, or especially to joke, with a woman indicated intimacy between the two. It seems that by purporting to defend the reputation of a woman by chasing other men away from this type of intimacy, de la Cruz wanted to keep, or gain, Ana López’s attentions for himself. A similar incident occurred in 1632. Juan de Santa Ana explained to the investigating authorities that he had been speaking with María Rodríguez, a widow and tavern keeper in Carmona, when Diego Bernal arrived and asked to be introduced to her. Santa Ana refused, and Bernal drew his sword, called Santa Ana a pícaro and a chicken, and announced that he wanted to fight. Santa Ana declined to fight, telling Bernal to ‘‘go with God’’ and explaining that he was his friend, but Bernal persisted, following Santa Ana down the street until Santa Ana finally drew his own weapon and killed Bernal.∑≤ In Yébenes, the concern to protect the family extended to male relatives too, especially brothers. In 1615 when the constable of weights and measures for the fiel del juzgado entered Juan Portillo’s inn to inspect it, Portillo’s brother Andrés López Portillo reportedly ‘‘became upset . . . and called [the constable] a bellaco and drew his sword against him.’’ López Portillo denied the report, but if it indeed happened, then by aiming to protect his brother’s interests from a search that he claimed was ‘‘something customarily never done,’’ he exposed himself to criminal prosecution. The fiel del juzgado usually came down hard on those who threatened or defied members of the justicia, although in this case López Portillo was eventually fined the relatively small sum of one hundred maravedís.∑≥ In an example from 1614, Juan Rodrígues, a Portuguese resident of Yébenes, explained to the justicia that he came across a scene in the neighborhood of San Juan in which he saw about five men ‘‘threatening his brother Diego.’’ He rode up on his horse and put his hand to his sword, threatening the

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men and trying to prevent a fight. As it turns out, Diego had gone across the Calle Real with Juan Carpio Herrero to fight outside the jurisdiction of Toledo. The other men there had just made peace between the two men when Juan Rodrígues appeared and rekindled the conflict.∑∂ When a man needed help against the judicial authorities, he looked to his brother. In 1614 Agustín Carpio, a constable of Yébenes, had arrested Juan Ximénez for some o√ense and was temporarily holding him in the constable’s own house (a common practice). Ximénez escaped, but Carpio spotted him in the street and apprehended him again. Two servant boys witnessed this second arrest, however, and ran to inform Bartolomé Ximénez, Juan’s brother. Bartolomé rushed to the scene with his sword drawn and attacked Carpio, forcing the constable to withdraw. For good measure, Juan Ximénez drew his own dagger and taunted Carpio from behind the shield of his brother’s protection, telling the constable, ‘‘If you would like me to kill you I could certainly do it.’’∑∑ Two years earlier Carpio was involved in a similar incident. Juan Miguel and Eugenio Díaz had an argument and challenged each other to a duel. Andrés Pérez intervened and reconciled them, persuading them to ‘‘grasp hands as friends.’’ Shortly thereafter, Pérez heard that Miguel had broken the reconciliation, resuming the quarrel with Díaz. Pérez, the conciliator, found Miguel in the Calle Real and began trying to reconcile the two friends again when Carpio arrived and arrested Miguel. Then, according to the investigation, Miguel’s brother Francisco Miguel arrived. He berated Carpio, tried to take his sword away from him, and helped Juan Miguel escape arrest and flee to the jurisdiction of San Juan.∑∏ Carpio’s experience and other examples show that brothers demonstrated support for each other in times of crisis, and an example from the Good Friday Pardons shows that this behavior was not limited to Yébenes. In 1627 Andrés Gonçales told the justicia of Madrid that he had been walking with a friend at night down a street when a man came out of a tavern and asked for a word with him. When Gonçales approached his interrogator, he was cut twice with a sword. Gonçales recognized his assailant’s voice as belonging to Martín Nieto, Diego Nieto’s brother. Diego had become Gonçales’s ‘‘mortal enemy’’ after the two had a dispute over a woman a few days previously. Gonçales testified that he had heard that Diego had asked Martín to kill him, and the two cuts did the trick, as Gonçales later died from his wounds.∑π Fraternity was not the only solidarity that called men to action. Uncles

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and nephews, brothers-in-law, and fathers and sons all rushed on occasion to the defense of their male relatives. According to one witness in Yébenes, when the twenty-five-year-old scribe Francisco López Delgado and Juan Serrano went to the jurisdiction of San Juan in 1627 to fight a duel, Francisco’s fifty-year-old father, Pedro López Delgado, found out from a bystander, who reported that he had seen a go-between tell Francisco that Serrano was waiting to meet him. Pedro arrived on the scene and began a diatribe against Serrano, calling him a bellaco, which led Serrano to draw his sword, which in turn led Francisco to draw his own. In the ensuing fight Serrano ended up wounded on the ground.∑∫ Here we have a case in which a father moved to take sides with his son, and then, when the father was threatened, the son acted in turn to defend him. The value put on men supporting their brothers, sons, and fathers suggests that the pull of blood ties between Castilian men was as strong as the need to protect wives and women kin. Juan de Soto understood the lure of these ties and criticized them in his confessor’s manual Obligations of All the Estates, warning that fathers must teach their sons to avoid rage through word and example. He singled out for opprobrium those who taught their sons to feel aggrieved at insults, to challenge others to fight duels, and to adopt their father’s enemies as their own.∑Ω Men also responded to a duty to defend the reputation of their families in a more general sense. We have already seen how Jew, Moor, and Morisco were all epithets that were employed during disputes in Yébenes.∏≠ When Sebastián de Sevilla and his wife, María Giménez, called Juan Carpio Anaya a Jew, Carpio Anaya responded by saying he could prove his family was Old Christian and brought a criminal complaint against Sevilla. Similarly, when Alonso de Ávila told Juan Carrasco that he could prove Carrasco was a Morisco, Carrasco initiated a criminal case against him in which he had dozens of witnesses testify to his family’s purity of blood.∏∞ In both these cases the legal action the victims took to refute and punish their a√ronters shows that men who were slandered took the accusation seriously. And indeed the accusations were serious. According to a witness, Carpio Anaya complained that Sevilla and Giménez specifically stated to him that ‘‘neither anyone of your lineage nor you could become a familiar’’ of the Inquisition, a position that required purity of blood, and Ávila threatened to bring the destructive force of the Inquisition down on Carrasco.∏≤ Similar to calling someone a thief, ac-

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cusations of ethnic impurity could lead to important legal and social consequences if the label stuck. Such accusations were not always taken so seriously, however. According to Eugenio Fernández, on a day in 1609 when he was in the nearby town of Consuegra with Sebastián García, García called Fernández a Jew and the grandson of a hanged man and challenged him to a duel the following Saturday. Fernández ignored the insults and the challenge until the following Saturday, when García sneaked up to Fernández from behind in the street, gave him two blows to the face, and insulted him further. Clearly, Fernández did not feel so strongly about being called a Jew or being challenged to fight by García. Only a physical, public a√ront in Yébenes in full view of their neighbors moved Fernández to act, and even then he chose to open a criminal case against García rather than reply with violence of his own.∏≥ Two years later, Alonso Galán complained to the justicia that Catalina López called him a Jew and a bellaco after he intervened in a dispute between López and her husband. Galán brought her up before the justicia, but before the case was remitted to the fiel del juzgado, he pardoned her. He did not even insist that she formally retract her statements under oath.∏∂ García and Galán did not seem terribly concerned about the community believing they truly were Jews, since they did not feel it necessary to explicitly deny the allegations but simply wanted to stop the abuse or retaliate for it. The terms Jew, Moor, and Morisco were potent weapons in the rhetoric of honor, and as such Castilians used them tactically as well as meaningfully. The custom of piling on disparaging terms one after the other to attack an opponent gives further evidence that the terms were often used simply to lash out at one’s opponent rather than intended as a serious e√ort to change the way the community viewed a family. Although María Prieta called Pedro Hernández de Pedraza ‘‘moro judío ladrón infame’’ in 1609, it seems unlikely that he truly was a Moor, a Jew, a thief, and a scandalous person all at once.∏∑ Slander against one’s blood purity was serious, but it did not automatically leave an indelible stain on one’s honor, and accusations did not always need to be answered with violence. There were other ways to attack the reputation of an opponent’s family. As we have seen in a previous chapter, mestiza and negro were both terms of a√ront directed at an opponent’s ancestry.∏∏ The phrases hijo de puta (son of a whore) and fue de señora mala (born of a sinful woman), and

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the terms cabrón and cornudo, both of which could refer to cuckolds or illegitimacy, were all sexual slurs employed to impugn the reputation not just of one’s immediate opponent but of his entire family. Mulato and mulata were not terms found in the fiel del juzgado’s records, but they do appear in the Good Friday Pardons, especially from such places as Seville where mixed-race heritage was relatively common, and were meant to signify either black African parentage or Moorish ancestry. Finally, an opponent could deliver a√ronts to an opponent’s family without any religious or racial meaning. In 1611 Francisco del Corral, the sacristan, complained to the justicia that Juan Martín de Mora had threatened and insulted him. Mora brought a countersuit, alleging that Corral had threatened to cut his legs as he passed by in the street and said, ‘‘Your entire lineage, they are nothing to me,’’ and, ‘‘Who is your lineage?’’∏π There was a wide range of slander by which men could be o√ended, whether it was based on ethnic purity, sexual purity, or anything else. Although men in Yébenes were not members of the nobility, they identified their own reputations with their family reputation just like the titled grandees of Spain. This identification was expressed most explicitly when men made positive statements about themselves to underline the seriousness of the slanderous statements made against them. Time and again, plainti√s referred to their parents and relatives as ‘‘honorable’’ or ‘‘honest’’ (‘‘honrrados’’) and important leaders of the town (‘‘principales’’ and ‘‘ricos’’). Men identified their own interests and reputations with those of their families, and one part of a man’s individual reputation rested on his ability and willingness to defend the reputation of his family and all its members.

credit, debt, and property Of all the issues that caused violence between men in Yébenes, the second category—controversy surrounding credit, debt, and the proper ownership of property and money—was perhaps the most common. One Sunday night in 1612, Diego Rodríguez, a scribe, was sitting on a bench with a priest, Luis Çid, outside Çid’s door when Juan Camacho, who was currently residing in the churchyard in order to seek refuge from the authorities, walked by. According to Rodríguez, Camacho asked to speak with him, saying, ‘‘Señor Diego Rodríguez, two words please.’’ Rodríguez told him to come to where he was sitting, and Camacho arrived and asked the scribe to

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‘‘pay him the thirty reales that he owed him.’’ Rodríguez replied, ‘‘I do not owe anything to him because if I did owe him anything, there would be no reason to ask me for it’’—in other words, Rodríguez always paid what he owed without having to be reminded about it by his creditors. Camacho contradicted him, saying, ‘‘Yes, he does owe me the money.’’ Rodríguez answered, ‘‘You say to me that you gave them to me before a third [party], and I will rely on what the third [party] says, and on what I say before Çid the priest, and I will stand by what I say.’’ To this Camacho replied, ‘‘I swear to God that I do not know what you are talking about, and that I will go get the justicia,’’ and he put his hand on a long weapon (a ‘‘terciado’’) that he carried under his cape. Rodríguez made a move to seize the weapon, and the two men grappled until Çid and others pulled them apart. Still lunging at Rodríguez, Camacho declared, ‘‘I swear to God that I have to kill him because I am not going to spend my whole life seeking refuge’’ in the church.∏∫ Disputes over debts like this one were surprisingly common in the archives of the fiel del juzgado.∏Ω Credit was crucial to the livelihood of peasants and artisans in seventeenth-century Castile. The agricultural workers and artisans of Yébenes operated in a market economy, but the entire economy of Spain was chronically short of coinage, leaving individuals heavily dependent on credit. Although the crown could prop up its shaky finances through a mixture of international banking, mortgages on future tax returns, and coercion, and wealthy merchants had access to sophisticated forms of credit such as the cambio, or letter of exchange, and the censo, which could work like a mortgage or a lease, peasants and artisans had to make do largely with informal credit, especially for everyday market transactions.π≠ Social relations in the town were reinforced and complicated by a thick web of debt and credit relationships—mostly informal and not written down—so economic problems translated easily into interpersonal crises. There was little distinction made then between the idea of credit in the technical sense of financial solvency and the idea of credit in the social sense of trustworthiness and good faith. Before legal and financial institutions developed a level of sophistication necessary to treat credit solely as a measure of solvency, creditworthiness was regarded as a part of sociability in general. Credit and debt transactions were inseparable from other social transactions such as patronage. In the judgment of one’s neighbors, honesty, fairness, and trust played as much of a role as

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actual economic strength in assessing credit. Because financial credit, like all other aspects of a person’s reputation, was determined largely by the opinion of others, when disputes arose over debt and credit, slander and threats became powerful weapons.π∞ A man’s credit was bound up with his honor, helping to constitute his public reputation alongside his honesty, his ability to protect his family, his performance in a trade, and other characteristics. After all, debt was a risk that men took in order to provide for their families. It is important to remember that at this time, before the development of bankruptcy laws, the loss of one’s credit or the failure of debtors to repay loans could lead to financial ruin and poverty, making the smooth functioning of credit relations vital for men on both sides of each loan. Therefore it was logical that the rhetoric of honor was used as an important tool for the defense of credit and for maintaining relationships between creditors and debtors. Credit rested in part on the skill with which a man managed his debt and also on how well he maintained his social relations in general and how fairly he treated others. Writers of dueling manuals recognized that many Castilians believed disputes over debts to be legitimate reasons for duels, and Christian moralists acknowledged the importance of credit and debt to male honor.π≤ Rodríguez Lusitano used a dispute over a debt to illustrate when lying could be permissible. In the scenario, ‘‘Pedro’’ loans money to ‘‘Francisco,’’ and the two men agree to keep the debt a secret. Francisco repays the money, but then Pedro publicly asks Francisco to pay back the debt. According to Lusitano, it would be permissible for Francisco to swear that he had never received any loan from Pedro, since Pedro had in essence lied when he publicly asked Francisco to pay him back, breaching the trust the two men shared.π≥ As in the episode between Juan Camacho and Eugenio Rodríguez, demands for payment could lead quickly to violent confrontation in Yébenes. Rodríguez’s statement, ‘‘If I did owe him anything, there would be no reason to ask me for it,’’ admirably spoke to the heart of the matter surrounding honor and creditworthiness.π∂ Trust was the key to creditor and debtor relationships; to remind a debtor of his obligation implied that the creditor’s trust had wavered. Trust in a debtor, or lack thereof, was not simply an issue between the two people involved. The confrontation between Camacho and Rodríguez took place in the street before witnesses, and the decision to speak about credit and debt in the presence of others was a strategy meant to remind one another that their public reputations

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rested on their conduct in resolving such issues. While debating a loan of thirty reales, Camacho and Rodríguez were also arguing over their claims to respect among their neighbors in the community. This point is made clear in another example from Yébenes in 1620, when Pedro Bermejo Ortega asked Bartolomé Ximénez Majano to repay two hundred reales of silver—a considerable sum—while the two men were in a butcher’s shop. Ximénez said, ‘‘I do not have them because they have been spent.’’ Bermejo responded, ‘‘It is rightly said that you, sir, are a friend of your money and pay it back poorly.’’ To this Ximénez retorted, ‘‘Whoever says that I pay poorly lies,’’ and before anything else could happen an alcalde who was present separated the two men. Bermejo then said, ‘‘If the señor alcalde was not in front of me I would draw my dagger and strike Ximénez with it.’’ The alcalde ended the confrontation as he ‘‘reconciled them, brought them to jail, and put their hands together and made them friends.’’π∑ In this confrontation, in order to pressure Ximénez into paying, or perhaps out of spite after he realized he would not get his money, Bermejo changed the subject from the debt that Ximénez owed him to his public reputation, implying that others thought he was not trustworthy with debts. Ximénez showed how seriously he viewed that threat to his reputation by indirectly giving Bermejo the lie. When a creditor like Bermejo asked a debtor for repayment, it could signal a crisis in the relationship, either because the creditor had begun to doubt the solvency of his debtor or because it put the debtor in the embarrassing position of admitting he could not pay immediately, thus publicly acknowledging his own financial dependence on others. The two men chose their maneuvers and posturing carefully because they were playing for an audience. This strategy was one that Bermejo skillfully employed by expanding the explicit issue of two hundred reales between two men into the larger question of Ximénez’s creditworthiness in general. Bermejo chose to ask Ximénez for his money in a butcher’s shop instead of in a private setting, probably in order to shame his debtor into paying. In addition to the alcalde and constable who entered the butcher’s during the argument and put an end to it, the judicial authorities questioned two witnesses who were in the shop as the confrontation unfolded. In the presence of these people (and perhaps others), both Bermejo and Ximénez made reference to a larger discourse about character that went beyond the opinions of the two principals. Bermejo told

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Ximénez that ‘‘it is said’’ that he paid back loans poorly, a statement that accomplished two things at once. First, Bermejo employed a tactic from the rhetoric of honor by indirectly insulting Ximénez and leaving it up to the debtor to decide how seriously to take it. Second, he alluded to the existence of a poor opinion throughout the community regarding Ximénez’s character. Bringing in the communal judgment of the town underlined the serious implications that any specific debt could have if mishandled and alluded to the process by which gossip among neighbors translated into an individual’s standing in the community. Similarly, Bermejo’s remark that if the alcalde were not present he would draw his dagger was meant for the magistrate and for the townspeople as much as for Ximénez. The magistrate recognized that the private argument between Bermejo and Ximénez was quickly becoming a breach of the public peace. By stopping the confrontation, enforcing a truce between the two men, and beginning a criminal investigation, the alcalde prevented a violent attack, stopped the dispute before one of the two men su√ered further public humiliation, and restored the normal social ties between the two men. Or at least his intervention resurrected a facade of peaceful relations, leaving Bermejo to pursue Ximénez through less disruptive means. Debtors could also simply refuse outright to acknowledge a debt, as happened with Juan Camacho and Eugenio Rodríguez. For all his temporizing and bluster in the butcher’s shop, at least Ximénez acknowledged that while he could not repay his debt to Bermejo immediately, he did indeed owe the money. Assertions that the debt never existed or had already been paid moved easily into honor language and violent confrontation since truth telling and accusations of lying pointed straight to the heart of honor rhetoric. In 1615, Gaspar Ruiz asked Andrés López Portillo to pay him thirty maravedís for some charcoal that he had sold him, but López Portillo said that he did not owe Ruiz anything and maintained that he had already paid the full price. Ruiz called him a ‘‘filthy, illborn bellaco,’’ which led to a further exchange of insults between the two men. In response, López Portillo said that ‘‘he was as good as Ruiz,’’ to which Ruiz retorted, ‘‘Not even as good as my ass.’’ Ruiz then began a legal strategy against his debtor and went around Yébenes recruiting witnesses who would support his version of the facts in a lawsuit. López Portillo countered with a criminal case against Ruiz, claiming that he was

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‘‘taking away my good reputation, name, and repute, and doing me ill.’’ López Portillo scored a victory during the legal maneuvering, since the magistrate who questioned Ruiz asked if he recognized that López Portillo was ‘‘an hombre de bien, honorable and of good name, repute, and opinion, well born and from an honorable family and kin,’’ and Ruiz admitted that he was.π∏ Again we see two men using the rhetoric of honor, including the manipulation of the legal system, to move from a dispute about a specific debt to a dispute about character that involved the wider community. López Portillo used language that explicitly equated creditworthiness with honor, and he settled the incident when he employed the criminal justice system to force Ruiz to disavow his insults and endorse his good name. Disputes occurred even when a claimant could show proper legal proof of debt. In 1633 Sebastián Rubio and Pedro Barba Cordovés fell into a quarrel so heated that they already had drawn their swords before others rushed into Barba Cordovés’s house and prevented a fight. Rubio, who had come to collect the payment for a debt that Barba Cordovés owed him, carried a pledge of some kind from Barba Cordovés to remind the debtor of his obligations. His e√orts were to no avail, for Barba Cordovés repudiated the obligation and asked Rubio to leave his house, telling him to ‘‘go with God.’’ππ Even with physical proof, Rubio could not get Barba Cordovés to acknowledge the debt. Rubio’s position emphasizes the fragility of debt relationships, and the quick recourse to drawn swords underscores the importance of creditworthiness. Credit relationships, like social relationships generally, wound their way through chains of people and in doing so ensnared otherwise unconnected individuals in unexpected, intense relationships. In 1622 Pedro García asked Fabian de Quiñones to repay a loan. Evidently, either Quiñones had lent the money he borrowed from García to a third man, Bartolomé Cid, or Cid coincidentally owed Quiñones an amount of money su≈cient to pay García, for Quiñones told García that Cid owed him the money, and he led García to Cid’s house. When Quiñones asked Cid to cover his debt to García, Cid replied that he would not be able to pay until Sunday, after someone else who owed him money—yet another person in this string of credit relationships—had repaid him. García replied that he could not wait until Sunday, and Cid responded, ‘‘Well then, I swear to God that you will not receive it for a month or even two.’’ Even-

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tually García lost patience and told Cid, ‘‘Hang yourself,’’ to which Cid responded, ‘‘Better that you should kiss my ass.’’ The conversation broke down from there, and the exchange ended with Cid attacking García, punching him in the face, and calling him a dirty pig. García called on Quiñones to be his witness in the criminal suit he opened against Cid immediately after the encounter.π∫ In this case, violence erupted between two men linked by bonds of credit and debt not directly but through a third party. Quiñones’s position here was ambiguous. Was he an honest broker, trying to get money from his debtor to pay his creditor as he claimed? Or was García an ally of his, helping Quiñones put more pressure on Cid? Wherever Quiñones began, he ended up on García’s side, bearing witness to Cid’s attack as García asked him to do.πΩ Interpersonal a√ront and violence were not the only ways Castilians involved in disputes over debt pursued their claims. One tactic creditors used to obtain payment was to call on the judicial authorities of the town, who enforced debt payment as one of their many duties. This move, however, did not always work. One evening in 1634, Miguel Rodríguez, a wool worker from Ciudad Rodrigo, went to the house of his employers in Yébenes, Andrés de Peñalber and his wife, to ask for the money they owed him for work performed three months earlier. Rodríguez declared that if they did not pay him, he would summon the magistrates the next day to enforce payment. In response to this threat Peñalber and his wife called Rodríguez a ‘‘bellaco’’ and attacked him. Rodríguez was a laborer and probably not very wealthy, while Peñalber owned more property than was usual in Yébenes, according to the inventory of goods seized by the constabulary when he was arrested for assault (his property included three paintings, rare items in Yébenes). Calling the authorities was a tool that Rodríguez hoped to use to level the balance of power between himself and his relatively a∆uent employer. To parry Rodríguez’s appeal to the authorities, Peñalber tried physical assault, but he ended up with a criminal prosecution in addition to being pursued for a debt.∫≠ Debtors, too, could invoke the authorities in a dispute, as Tomás Martín did in 1611. Juan García de Pasqual, a relative of Martín’s wife, came to Martín’s house to ask him to pay a debt. Martín said, ‘‘It is not known to ask for money in such a manner without an order from the authorities.’’ This remark led to an argument and then to blows when García de Pasqual attacked Martín with scissors.∫∞ Martín was of course blu≈ng; the records of the fiel del

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juzgado show plenty of other creditors who demanded repayment. Indeed, the moralist Rodríguez Lusitano admonished debtors to repay debts before a judge required it because one is ‘‘in conscience obliged to pay,’’ thus adding Christian virtue to neighborliness and the honor of one’s word as the pressures that mounted on debtors.∫≤ Debtors recognized that constables were weapons in the hands of their adversaries, so even when a constable was called to enforce a debt, the process did not always go smoothly. In 1613 Gaspar Ramón, a constable of the fiel del juzgado, came to Yébenes to collect a debt owed by Francisco Nieto to a church in Toledo—or, if Nieto failed to pay, to arrest either him or Andrés Nieto, his brother and guarantor. When Andrés discovered what was afoot, he told Ramón ‘‘that if he came, that sodomite, he would wish he hadn’t.’’ Ramón persisted, but before he could subdue Andrés with the help of a constable of Yébenes, Andrés wounded him. In his defense, Andrés claimed that when Ramón asked him to follow him to the jail, he requested ‘‘with great gentility and respect’’ that Ramón ‘‘show him the sureties that he carried’’ that gave him the authority to apprehend him, ‘‘and he would go willingly.’’ Ramón replied that ‘‘he had no need to show him the sureties to seize him,’’ and he seized Andrés and smacked him with his vara de justicia. Despite Andrés’s protests that Ramón ‘‘should treat him like an hombre de bien and not in such a manner,’’ the constable attacked him and arrested him.∫≥ In his testimony, Andrés shifted the focus from his unwillingness to pay the debt to Ramón’s allegedly inappropriate, disgraceful behavior. Constables trying to enforce the law were subject to the same tactics of a√ront and violence as private citizens. As we have seen, honor and the law were not so much two competing systems of justice but were instead intertwined, sometimes reinforcing and sometimes unraveling each other. The judicial authorities did not stand aloof from disputes about credit and honor, nor did they act only as impartial referees sorting out the damage after a dispute came to blows. The authorities desired to keep the peace, to punish slander and violence, and also to enforce claims of debt. Disputants, aware of the sometimes contradictory goals of the justicia, manipulated them, bringing them into their disputes when they saw an advantage in doing so—before, during, or after a violent confrontation began. Whether by making threats in the presence of a constable, threat-

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ening to run to the authorities, or requesting help from a constable, Castilians used the law as another tool for maintaining their credit. Cases recorded in the Good Friday Pardons demonstrate that violence and honor permeated disputes over credit and debt throughout Castile. In the plaza of Vequena in 1628, Agustín Hernández and Miguel Carcax argued over a sizable debt of four hundred reales. Carcax tried to induce Hernández to duel with him, but Hernández refused. An hour later, Carcax approached Hernández as he stood at the entrance of a church holding a rosary. Again Hernández tried to defuse the situation, objecting that ‘‘he did not want to go, nor want to fight with him.’’ Carcax repeated the challenge: ‘‘Come along, if you are a man.’’ This time Hernández did follow him, and Carcax was killed.∫∂ Carcax’s attempt to link credit with manhood seemed to present a challenge too powerful for Hernández to resist. Similarly, in 1633 Alonso Martín went to the tavern of Juan Francisco in Seville to ask him for sixteen quartos (small coins) that Francisco owed him for some bread. Accounts di√er as to what happened next. According to Francisco, Martín had appeared with three other men, all bearing naked swords and daggers, and called him a cuckold. Even though Francisco paid the money, Martín seized the tavern keeper’s sword, brought it into the street, and then attacked Francisco when he came out. According to Martín, it was Francisco who insulted Martín, saying it appeared that he was asking for the money as a ‘‘trick’’ or ‘‘swindle,’’ and then Francisco and four friends attacked him. In any event, Martín was wounded in the skirmish, and after he gave his deposition to the judicial authorities, he died.∫∑ While most of the disputes surrounding debt relationships occurred after a loan had been given, reputation was also involved in shopkeepers’ decisions to extend or refuse credit to their customers. In Seville in 1633, an apprentice of Jerónimo de Chaves, a tailor, went to a butcher’s shop to buy some meat. María de Obiedo, a vendor at the shop, refused to give it to him because fifteen days earlier Chaves had bought two pounds of meat but had not paid. Upon hearing from his apprentice that his credit was no longer good at the butcher’s, Chaves went to the shop with his son and his son-in-law to complain. In the overheated atmosphere of the shop, Chaves’s son drew his knife, and in the ensuing a√ray, a man was killed.∫∏ Although credit was the economic arena in which men were most

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susceptible to confrontation, slander, and violence, reputation also intersected with property and the market in other ways. Calling a man a thief was a common tactic pursued during disputes about access to property. For example, in 1609 Blas Ribero was strolling down the street playing a guitar one night when he passed the inn owned by Alonso Carrasco and his wife, Catalina López. López emerged and said that Ribero was ‘‘a thief because he had stolen some hens and some skirts and had gone to sell them to her.’’ Such an accusation was harmful, not least because it could result in criminal action against Ribero for theft. López’s husband, Alonso Carrasco, alleged that Ribero’s response was to draw his sword and insult López, and that Ribero would have killed López and their son Juan Carrasco if not for the intervention of bystanders.∫π Accusations of theft of items such as clothing and livestock were especially problematic because these goods were so common and interchangeable that it was hard to prove or disprove such allegations, making slander all the more powerful and reputation all the more vulnerable. Wool and firewood were also common, fungible commodities that could easily spark accusations of theft in Yébenes, as the alcalde Juan Rubio found out in 1614 when Andrés García de Gaspar began saying publicly that Rubio’s servants had stolen a wagonload of firewood from him.∫∫ While the term ladrón, or ‘‘thief,’’ was generally reserved for those who stole movable goods, its meaning expanded to include accusations of improper manipulation of the legal and market procedures used to legitimize the distribution of real property. As we saw in an earlier chapter, Pedro Fernández Bujío and his brother-in-law Pedro Cobo brought a criminal suit in 1611 against Catalina Hernández, the sister of one of the plainti√s and sister-in-law of the other. They accused her of having called them ‘‘thieves and usurpers of other people’s estates.’’ It seems that when Pedro López de Orgaz, a scribe in Yébenes, went to her house one day to serve a notification to her and her husband, she began to shout that ‘‘her brothers and brothers-in-law were mistreating her by seeking a partition of what was hers and what she and her husband had inherited and improved, and that they insulted her by wanting a part of her house that she and her husband had built,’’ and she then fell to her knees and began praying aloud that God would not let them take what was hers.∫Ω Hernández probably thought that making a public accusation was her best chance of countering whatever legal action her relatives were taking to get their hands on her

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property, and Fernández Bujío and Cobo probably thought that prosecuting her for slander was their best chance of advancing their legal action unmolested. Similarly, while a large group of people milled about a cemetery before Mass one day in 1614, Juan Rubio and Juan Bermejo ‘‘the Fat’’ got into a dispute over whether some property should be administered by the town, as Rubio wanted, or should be rented out, which Bermejo favored. Rubio alleged that Bermejo became angry ‘‘because the rich, not the poor, would profit from its public administration’’ and called Rubio a ‘‘bellaco’’ and a ‘‘rabble-rouser’’ (‘‘rebolbedor del pueblo’’).Ω≠ Because the powerful were always tempted to twist the workings of town government and civil courts to support their own concerns, the discrepancy between the public face of good government and the private scheming for advantage made those in control vulnerable to defamation. The Good Friday Pardons show that throughout Castile, disputes over even the tiniest amount of property could lead to violent confrontation. In 1626 in Olula de Castro, a village in the mountains north of Almería, Pedro López and Bartolomé García argued over whether López had damaged a mulberry tree belonging to García. Although López o√ered to give García one of his own trees in compensation, and although there was a third man there who tried to calm them down, García, who served as an alcalde, tried to arrest López. López shot him with an arquebus in response.Ω∞ And in Seville one day in 1625, Gaspar de los Reyes, a laborer in a tile and brick-making shop, asked Fernández de Soliz, his employer’s brother, for a hoe that Reyes had lent him a year ago. Soliz said that he did not have it, but Reyes went into his house and took the hoe he found there. Soliz later asked for the hoe back, but Reyes said it was his, which led Soliz to threaten to kill him. Reyes told him to ‘‘go with God, and that if it was his hoe he should go and entreat the justicia.’’ Soliz began to throw bricks at him until Reyes took out a dagger he carried in his belt. When Soliz tried to seize the weapon, Reyes stabbed him.Ω≤

oficio The role that alcaldes and constables played in these a√airs points to a third category of male status that provoked fights over honor: one’s performance in an o≈ce or trade. Juan Camacho, the troublemaking tailor of Yébenes, first came to the attention of the fiel del juzgado in 1609, when the alcalde Francisco Cid encountered him one night in the Calle de la

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Raya while making his rounds and asked him to surrender his sword because it was past nine o’clock. A witness accompanying Cid recalled that Camacho’s first response was to try to flee, claiming that ‘‘he did not recognize [Cid] as the justicia’’ and ‘‘he did not want to hand it over unless there was a light so that he could recognize him.’’ Cid procured a light source from a nearby house, but Camacho still refused to hand over his sword. Finally Don Francisco, governor of the neighboring jurisdiction of Yébenes de San Juan, persuaded Camacho to give his sword to him. While handing over his sword Camacho remarked, ‘‘Here you go, your grace, but I will go to my house for another sword, and then this will be taken from you.’’ Provoked, the alcalde and governor then decided to take Camacho to jail, but Camacho fled before they could seize him.Ω≥ Camacho had another incident with the justicia three years later when he was seeking refuge in the churchyard to avoid prosecution after the fight he had with his brother-in-law Francisco Moreno. Witnesses reported that as Diego Palaçios, an alcalde, walked by the cemetery one night while making his rounds, Camacho called out, ‘‘I swear to Christ that I will make him pay money for having taken away my arms,’’ and while holding bricks in his hands he added, ‘‘Although they have taken my sword from me I still have bricks.’’ Palaçios responded, ‘‘What are you saying about bricks, why don’t you speak with good manners to someone to whom you must yield with those?’’ They went back and forth for a while, until finally Camacho said, ‘‘Go with God your grace and leave me here, with God or with the devil,’’ adding that the alcaldes were trying to force him to leave Yébenes, and that Palaçios should return the next day and ‘‘leave your vara behind and we will be equals.’’ Later he was heard complaining by another witness, ‘‘I swear to Christ that the justicia are bellacos cabritos who wanted to remove me from the sanctuary, and I swear to God that if those buggering screwed cuckolded cabritos bellacos came for me I would have to kill them.’’Ω∂ Here we have one example from the many that appear in the records of the fiel del juzgado of a man who refused to recognize the authority of the alcaldes and constables as they tried to perform their duties. Camacho would not acknowledge the members of the justicia as a unique body of men charged with o≈cial responsibilities and privileges; instead, he tried to treat them as men no di√erent from himself, employing the threats and posturing of the rhetoric of honor to do so. He pretended not to know that

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the men trying to take his sword away from him in 1609 were o≈cials, even after a light was procured that clearly showed who they were, and in 1612 he ascribed the actions of the o≈cials who had taken away his sword again to personal motives. He ended with an explicit challenge to Diego Palaçios to leave behind the vara de justicia and meet him to fight the next day as equals. He then added the same sort of verbal a√ronts that were used in normal confrontations among all types of men. The issues faced by town o≈cials were part of the larger issue involving o≈ce, trade, and status faced by all men in early modern Castile. Men’s reputations rested in part on their performance in what they called their oficio, which can be translated as ‘‘o≈ce’’ but also as trade or occupation. As Covarrubias defined it, ‘‘Commonly, it means the occupation that each one has in his estate.’’Ω∑ Throughout early modern Europe one’s trade, which often meant a membership in a guild, provided one of the pillars of identity and public recognition for the artisan class. Family and neighborhood, the two other major pillars of artisan identity, were usually at least partially dependent on one’s occupation too, since members of a trade tended to cluster in the same neighborhoods and marry into each other’s families. One’s occupation, be it surgeon or shepherd, set the parameters of one’s economic well-being and social status. In Yébenes, an oficio provided a man with a readily available public label for himself, as evidenced by the common practice of alcaldes, who during criminal investigations often began interviewing witnesses by asking their name, oficio, and where they were vecinos.Ω∏ More specifically, men were judged by how well they performed in their callings. This applied to artisans engaged in a trade as well as to members of the justicia. Public appraisal of men’s performances composed part of their reputations, exposing them to slander on this issue and necessitating that they defend themselves. Confrontations over the behavior of alcaldes and constables were more common in the fiel del juzgado’s records than those over performance in a trade, but their prominence probably reflects in part the gravity with which the fiel del juzgado and the justicia of Yébenes considered disobedience to their own authority. Closely related to issues of oficio were issues of status. Noblemen expected deference from lower-status men, and they engaged in violence to defend their prerogatives. Nobility, and the right to expect deference, was an aspect of reputation for those men who had such high status.

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Although no such men appear in the records from Yébenes, they, and especially their servants, do appear in the Good Friday Pardons. The clergy figured prominently in the Yébenes records, however, as a group of men defined somewhat by their profession, as though they were artisans, but also defined by possessing an altogether di√erent legal, social, and moral status than laypeople. In an example we encountered in chapter 2, one shoemaker trying to sell some leather to another grew frustrated when his price was not met and accused the other man of not understanding the ‘‘oficio of shoemaker.’’Ωπ Many disputes and a√ronts involving an artisan’s oficio revolved around fair price, like this one, or fair competition. In 1613 Pedro Díaz, a schoolteacher, reported that while walking down the street he had been approached by his competitor Gregorio Franco. The encounter began politely enough, with Franco saying, ‘‘How is your grace, Señor Pedro Díaz?’’ Díaz responded with more pleasantries, but Franco then said, ‘‘I am very angry with your grace, because you go around taking away my boys.’’ ‘‘It is not my practice to do that,’’ retorted Díaz, ‘‘and even less would I do it now because if there had been an occasion that you gave me to do so, it was because you have taken some boys that I had in my school and have tried with flattery to take some others from me.’’ Franco then punched Díaz, saying, ‘‘I swear to Christ that what you just said to me was a lie because you went every day to the houses of my boys to tell their parents that they should bring them to you.’’ Díaz gave Franco the lie in turn by saying that only he told the truth. Others then separated them while Franco insulted Díaz further and put his hand to his dagger.Ω∫ The two men used the rhetoric of honor, including such elements of the duel as assault, oath taking, and threats of more violence, to try to settle a disagreement about professional ethics. Often competence was at issue, as in the above example involving the two shoemakers. In 1614 Baltasar Anaya and Diego Rodríguez de Figueroa, a scribe, got into a heated argument over a document. Witnesses related that Anaya told Rodríguez to ‘‘shut up about that which you do not understand,’’ then the two men gave each other the lie, then Anaya threw his hat at Rodríguez.ΩΩ In another example, the medical establishment of Yébenes asserted itself over a rival. According to one witness, the surgeon Gabriel Guerrero, the apothecary Bartolomé Serrano, and a physician known only as ‘‘Doctor Cerro’’ visited the house of Gaspar Garçía Prieto,

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who was ill. They found that Benito Palomé, a man who was not from Yébenes but from Galicia in northwest Spain, had already been there. The three professionals confronted Palomé, who had been treating other people in Yébenes, accused him of being an ‘‘ensalmador,’’ a spell-caster or quack, and let him know their displeasure. Among other things, Guerrero called him a drunkard and a thief and said that he would give him one hundred blows with a cudgel. Palomé responded that Guerrero lied, but before things could get out of control others got between them and made peace. Guerrero put his hand on the dagger that he carried in his belt, however, and when Palomé left, Guerrero had to be forcibly shut up inside the house to keep him from following Palomé and doing violence.∞≠≠ The medical professionals protected their interests by employing the rhetoric of honor to chase someone out based on his lack of a creditable oficio. Just as with credit and debt, honor and elements of the duel governed conflicts over fair price, competition, and competence. Evidence from the Good Friday Pardons shows that this was the case throughout Castile. In Palencia in 1629, Martín García reported to the authorities that Don Antonio de Sandoval and some friends came to the shop of Antonio García, a jeweler, where Martín was working. Sandoval asked him if he could make an ornament to embellish a student’s collar, and Martín replied that he could not do it for less than two and a half reales. Sandoval retorted that ‘‘[Martín] and his master were price gougers who always charge more than what they deserve.’’ Sandoval then grabbed a needle used for decorating work on the lathe and said ‘‘he would pay with this.’’ Martín begged him ‘‘not to take that since it wasn’t his but instead was his master’s,’’ and Sandoval said that he was a ‘‘shameless pícaro, and for this he would leave him.’’ Martín responded that Sandoval was ‘‘lowborn,’’ an a√ront that provoked Sandoval to run back to his father’s house, fetch a sword, and return to stab Martín in the belly, which eventually killed him.∞≠∞ Another dispute over fair price led to violence in Segovia in 1626, when Juan Martín brought a mule into a shop to be shoed. According to a witness, Marcos Miguel, a servant at the shop, put two horseshoes on and asked Martín for three reales. Martín protested that he did not have more than ten quartos, and in response Miguel ‘‘swore that he would have to give him the three reales or he would take the shoes o√ the mule.’’ Martín argued with him, but Miguel went ahead and removed the shoes, leading to further argument and then to Martín’s death when Miguel stabbed him

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in the chest.∞≠≤ Even though both Marcos Miguel and Martín García were servants or apprentices, they both appealed to the standards of their oficio: a fair price for work. This led their opponents to counter with the rhetoric of honor, choosing bluster and threats perhaps because they wanted to avoid the humiliation of having their wishes denied by a lowly servant. Confrontations involving alcaldes and constables also fall into the category of disputes involving oficio. Similar to other early modern constabularies, the justicia was not a professional police force with welldefined duties, and the constables found themselves responsible for carrying out the orders of the alcaldes in all of their functions, including criminal cases, civil litigation, and the enforcement of the payment of debts. Symbolically, their demand for respect was embodied in the vara de justicia they carried. The constables inserted themselves into their neighbors’ most emotional and volatile crises, but there was no clearly defined professional status to separate them from their neighbors.∞≠≥ The fate of judicial o≈cials provides an interesting case study of male honor because the status that their o≈ce lent to them became integrated with their personal reputation and, likewise, their own personal skill in managing interpersonal relations was critical to the performance of their duties.∞≠∂ Like many residents of Yébenes, Camacho used two tactics with the constables and alcaldes: first, refusing to treat members of the justicia di√erently than other men, and second, criticizing them as unjust and accusing them of serving their own private interests instead of the good of the community. The simplest way to pursue the first option was to employ the rhetoric of honor against o≈cials as one would against any man. In 1634 Alonso Bravo Pinedos complained that he and the constable Jacinto Pérez went to the house of Estevan Ruiz with an order from an alcalde to make Ruiz pay a debt that he owed to Ysabel Guerrera. Ruiz shouted out that Pérez came wrongfully and that he would not pay, and that Pérez was not an ‘‘hombre de bien’’ and did not perform his oficio honorably. He finished by challenging the constable to a duel. Alluding to Pérez’s lowly social standing as not quite a man of property was, if the statement was true, a particularly cruel way to scorn a constable—his o≈ce did not match his status.∞≠∑ In 1614 Juan de la Puente was even more vehement. According to a witness, Gaspar Ramón, a constable of the fiel del juzgado, approached de la Puente in the public plaza to notify him that he had been ordered to pay a debt of twelve reales. De la Puente responded that ‘‘if he

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showed him the authority with which he notified him of the order, he would recognize being notified, but if not, not.’’ The constable put his hand to his sword, and de la Puente replied, ‘‘I am as good as you.’’ De la Puente then escaped to Yébenes de San Juan with the help of his brothers-in-law.∞≠∏ Contemporary jurists might have sympathized with de la Puente’s protests. In his Treatise and Summary of All the Laws, Francisco de Pradilla Barnuevo warned constables that orders to seize someone or something must be made in writing and shown to the suspect if requested.∞≠π In the Policy for Corregidores, Castillo de Bobadilla warned constables that when they met armed men while making their rounds, they must not put their hands to their swords ‘‘and obligate those people by startling them, thinking that someone wants to kill them and not recognizing the justicia, to do the same in order to defend themselves.’’∞≠∫ Furthermore, Castillo de Bobadilla warned constables that they must carry their varas de justicia with them ‘‘in order that they might be believed and recognized,’’ especially at night, ‘‘and if they could not be recognized, they may be resisted without penalty.’’∞≠Ω If a former corregidor such as Castillo de Bobadilla acknowledged these things, it could only be expected that men such as Juan de la Puente would question the special status claimed by constables. One could get in trouble for not respecting the o≈cials even if one meant no harm, as Alonso García Guerrero found out in 1609 when two constables brought charges against him for having attacked them. The two had come to the house of Luisa Sánchez to arrest one of her servants when García assaulted them, they claimed. During the criminal investigation García explained that he only ‘‘began to joke around as they were accustomed to do at other times.’’ One of the constables ‘‘said a word of courtesy to him,’’ then García tried to land a punch on the o≈cial, but the o≈cial would not let him and from there the joking slid into a fight.∞∞≠ Either the constables had been in no mood for fooling around—acceptable during ‘‘other times’’—while on o≈cial business, or García was lying, trying, under questioning, to mask his aggression as playfulness. Rodríguez Lusitano reminded his readers that resisting arrest was violent and immoral, and Pradilla Barnuevo added that o≈cials should punish anyone who resisted arrest with public shaming and eight years’ service in the galleys—or, if they could not get the suspect cleanly, the constables could justifiably kill him.∞∞∞ But Castillo de Bobadilla maintained that resisting arrest was allowable when the constables used too much force,

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attacked without cause, or exceeded their authority. Here again, there was a sizable gray area that allowed men such as Alonso García Guerrero to claim justification. Members of the justicia did not help solidify the line between the rest of the community and themselves when they used their o≈cial powers for their own private interests. Juan de Soto reserved a chapter of his confessor’s manual for constables, scribes, and other petty legal o≈cials. ‘‘Constables have a very dangerous o≈ce,’’ he noted, because the temptation to use public authority for private ends was great.∞∞≤ Castillo de Bobadilla warned that corregidores had to watch constables closely to ensure that they did not abuse their o≈ce for private ends.∞∞≥ The behavior of the constables and alcaldes of Yébenes bears this concern out. Constables employed the rhetoric of honor toward other men while performing their professional duties, just as others did against them. We have seen already in a previous chapter how the constable Eugenio Pérez Oliva gave the lie to a priest named Daniel and struck him in the face when the priest criticized Pérez Oliva for executing an order against him.∞∞∂ In another case from 1623, the constable Agustín Carpio was spotted waiting outside the house of Francisco de la Cruz at night, holding a sword. The neighbor who spotted him reported to the justicia that her husband asked him what he was doing and he disingenuously responded, ‘‘I am not going to fight with him, and I can go around at night.’’ Nevertheless, when de la Cruz emerged from his house, Carpio argued with him over whether de la Cruz had taken some firewood from Carpio, and the two did end up fighting. When questioned by the fiel del juzgado, Carpio admitted that he had gone ‘‘to seek satisfaction about the matter’’ from de la Cruz, and that he had been carrying his sword, but only ‘‘ordinarily, as he was used to carry it as a constable,’’ and not because he wanted to kill de la Cruz or challenge him to a duel.∞∞∑ It is easy to see how the witnesses and the fiel del juzgado may have missed the subtle distinction that Carpio made between bearing arms as part of his o≈ce, even while seeking satisfaction in a personal matter, and bearing arms as a threat in a private dispute. In another example, Sebastián Garoz, an alcalde in Yébenes, got into an argument with Pedro Ortega over the sale of some mules in 1624. Garoz displayed his vara de justicia and tried to arrest Ortega during the quarrel. Ortega protested that they were in the jurisdiction of San Juan, not of Toledo, and stabbed the alcalde with a dagger. The o≈cial had tried to use his authority

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in a private dispute, and Ortega denied him the right to do so through his assault. In the end, however, the fiel del juzgado ruled in favor of Garoz, sentencing Ortega to one year of exile from Yébenes and a fine of eight hundred maravedís.∞∞∏ The casual manner of the administration of justice in Yébenes is underlined by another incident involving Agustín Carpio that was used previously in this chapter. In 1614, Carpio arrested Juan Ximénez, who then escaped from jail and evaded Carpio with the help of his brother Bartolomé. In order to escape from jail, all Ximénez had to do was leave Carpio’s house, where the constable was holding him. Putting a prisoner in one’s own house, or in another’s, was a common means to detain people in Yébenes. In his defense, Ximénez ‘‘admitted that he left, and he went to eat, and to dine at his own house’’ but claimed that he did so ‘‘by the order of the constables.’’∞∞π Using a constable’s house as a jail blurred the line between their o≈cial and private status. Another way to blur this line was for members of the justicia to grant private pardons to opponents in personal disputes, pardoning those who had wronged them and formally withdrawing from the criminal case against them. For example, in 1613 Juan Martín, a tanner, stood accused of attacking Francisco López de Ruedas, a constable who was trying to seize some goods from Martín’s house following an alcalde’s order. Martín accused the constable of punching him in the face, while López de Ruedas accused Martín of calling him a pícaro and striking him in the face. After the criminal proceedings began, López de Ruedas granted a private pardon to his attacker.∞∞∫ Similarly, Lic. Benito Pérez de Villaviciosa, a physician, and Cristobal Fernández, a constable, nursed resentments against each other stemming from some criticism that the physician had made against Fernández. Eventually the two fought, after Fernández cursed a slave and some chickens in the house of the physician. Lic. Melchor Rodríguez, the priest who made peace between the two men, reported that in response to the curse Pérez de Villaviciosa called Fernández a bellaco, added that whoever gave him the vara de justicia was a bellaco, and closed by threatening to ‘‘rip out his heart,’’ at which point the two men fought. The investigation that followed the confrontation included a record of the two men making a fee de amistades, thereby formally ending their hostility toward one another.∞∞Ω Even though the fiel del juzgado reacted strongly against those who insulted or resisted his agents in Yébenes, these o≈cials were allowed to act in the criminal prosecution

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against an opponent just as any man involved in a private matter would, either to escalate or reconcile a dispute. Another tactic men in Yébenes used to subvert the authorities was to criticize them as unjust. Because the justicia in Yébenes were responsible for upholding the edicts of the fiel del juzgado, tax collectors, and their own rulings to confiscate property, enforce the payment of debts, and protect the property rights of the city of Toledo and wealthy nonresident landowners, their actions were often a magnet for criticism. Sometimes the abuse came in a very direct form. In 1625 the alcalde Juan Martín Guerrero brought suit against Francisco Marín for having said that the alcalde had ‘‘committed many wrongs’’ in his o≈ce. Marín said this in the plaza when the alcalde tried to get him to pay some money in accordance with a warrant, or ‘‘cédula,’’ that had arrived in Yébenes from the royal court in Madrid. When questioned, Marín admitted that he had said that but insisted to the fiel del juzgado’s o≈cials that the alcalde had indeed committed many wrongs.∞≤≠ Others made criticisms indirectly, for example by defending those against whom the authorities acted. In 1613 some constables had just seized Alonso Gómez Chueco in order to bring him to jail when Francisco García, called El Soldado (The Soldier), appeared on the scene and started berating them. The o≈cials said that when they explained that they had arrested Gómez Chueco on the orders of an alcalde, El Soldado replied that ‘‘he should not carry him o√ like that even if fifty alcaldes ordered it,’’ and that he would stab the alcaldes with his dagger, whereupon he did in fact begin to assault the constables with the dagger. When questioned in jail in Toledo, El Soldado maintained that he had not attacked the o≈cials but had only questioned them as to why they had arrested ‘‘an honorable man.’’∞≤∞ One particular insult that was applied to members of the justicia more often than to any other men was soplón, meaning a spy or a snitch who betrays others to the authorities for personal gain. This epithet summed up the ambiguous position that the justicia held as mediators between outside rulers and the local community. Its use expressed the feelings of betrayal that many in Yébenes felt when their local authorities acted to protect the rights of powerful outsiders over the interests of the townspeople. As the most visible public symbol of the authority of the justicia, the vara de justicia drew the attention of those who wished to emphasize their displeasure toward the authorities. In 1614, for example, the constable Diego López de Ruedas

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visited the house of Francisco López de San Marcos in order to seize his goods for a legal action involving an unpaid debt. According to a witness who had accompanied López de Ruedas, when the constable tried to confiscate a doublet that was in the house, López de San Marcos resisted, swearing that the item belonged to his son and therefore should not be taken along with his goods. After the son, Juan López, arrived, he and his father forced the constable to give up the doublet and seized the vara de justicia from his hands and broke it, graphically enacting their rejection of his authority.∞≤≤ Another tactic, which Juan Camacho used, was to claim not to notice that an o≈cial was carrying the vara. Although in some cases there may have truly been some uncertainty over whether someone was a constable, pretending not to know was a convenient and less confrontational way to deny their authority, and it was a common excuse for men accused of disrespect. Castillo de Bobadilla understood the position of constables well when he counseled them ‘‘to have good sense, moderation and forbearance’’ and ‘‘to endure and ignore the rudeness and anger of all the people with whom they meet in the execution of their duties.’’∞≤≥ It should be noted that disputes involving constables and alcaldes were only the most common examples of disputes involving men who had a claim to special status. The tension between one’s public privileges and private interests led to disputes and criticism of others even in Yébenes, an obscure town with very few aristocrats or high o≈cials. Priests and other clergymen, scribes, tax collectors, and soldiers and servants of the royal court who traveled through the town were all involved in such incidents. The Good Friday Pardons show that in larger cities—especially Madrid, where the king’s court was located—noblemen and their servants constituted an additional layer of privilege and an additional layer of arrogance and resentment in confrontations involving status. To take just one example, the coachmen who transported noblemen and -women around Madrid seem to have been a particularly troublesome group. Under pressure from their demanding masters, who did not like to have their progress blocked as they made their way through the crowded city, coachmen took on some of their masters’ arrogance, placing themselves above the ordinary residents of Madrid because they served such illustrious men. There are a number of pardons involving coachmen who started fights in the service of their lords, such as in 1649 when a coachman of

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the Count of Montezuma was accused of beginning a confrontation in the plaza of Antón Martín. A boy was tending a stall that sold grain for his parents when the coachman arrived and tried to take a sack of barley. The boy and a friend from a neighboring stall asked him to wait until his parents arrived, but the coachman allegedly drew his dagger and stabbed the friend. A constable arrived to arrest the coachman, but as this was happening the count himself and other servants arrived. The count gave the constable a blow with his sword and rescued his servant from arrest.∞≤∂ Although the constable did not dare defend himself against the count (and in fact do√ed his hat in respect to him), his superiors, the alcaldes of the royal court who administered justice in Madrid, eventually prosecuted both the coachman and the count. Here we have a case where a nobleman would not su√er his servant to be arrested by a constable, and the constable and his superiors (who, in Madrid, represented the king) would not allow the count or his servant to get away with their violence and disdain for justice. Noblemen were notoriously proud, and in The Perfect Gentleman Antonio López de Vega warned them that the ‘‘inhumanity’’ and scorn with which they treated inferiors, placing themselves above common men, made them wild beasts and not angels as they believed.∞≤∑ Although the incident at Antón Martín involved relatively lofty people, the same concerns for status and o≈ce held true in Yébenes among the townspeople and peasants there. How well a man executed the duties of his oficio, whether he was a tailor in Yébenes or a servant of a count, was a vital part of his reputation. A schoolteacher in Yébenes was just as conscious of the respect due to him as the Count of Montezuma was, and they both employed the rhetoric of honor to defend their reputations and interests.

aggressive male sociability So far we have not commented on the settings of the confrontations found in the criminal records. The violence that Juan Camacho created around him arose from the normal social interactions that men in Yébenes carried on with each other all the time. They could be simple a√airs, such as Camacho’s visit to the house of his brother-in-law, Francisco Moreno, where the two men were just ‘‘enjoying themselves’’ (‘‘holgandose’’) until a fight broke out between them, or the scene where the scribe Diego Rodríguez was sitting on a bench next to his friend Luis Çid one

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evening and was approached by Camacho. Or they could be more involved, as was the case when Camacho threatened the alcalde Diego de Palaçios with bricks from the cemetery of the church. In order to avoid prosecution for a previous o√ense, Camacho had sequestered himself in the churchyard, just outside the parish church. As one of the few public spaces in Yébenes, the cemetery was a place where men gathered to socialize. The hours before his confrontation with the alcalde saw Camacho playing cards with some friends on the church steps, annoying Francisco del Corral, the sacristan, who wanted Camacho to go inside the church so he could lock up for the night and go home.∞≤∏ In another incident, Camacho insulted Gabriel Guerrero while the two of them were at an inn, another public space where men met to socialize and, consequently, get into conflicts. Competition and aggression were crucial aspects of male sociability in early modern Castile, especially for young men, so much so that amiable relations slid easily into hostility.∞≤π Public places such as the cemetery, plaza, inns, and street provided the setting for male sociability and, because they included spectators, intensified the pressure on men to win their competitions or at least to perform well.∞≤∫ Special times such as nighttime and festivals also helped provide the setting for conflict.∞≤Ω Two distinct forms of male sociability were especially conducive to violent confrontation: joking and gambling. To burlar, which meant to joke, tease, or mock, was a simple yet ambiguous form of play engaged in by men at all di√erent times. Aggression was often part of burlas (jokes and tricks), and some violent confrontations emerged out of burlas seemingly without any deeper cause than someone taking a joke too far. Gambling also encapsulated many concerns and vulnerabilities felt by men in early modern Castile, combining as it did competition, risk, public performance, and material gain and loss. Both space and time in Yébenes were divided into segments with specific purposes. The houses huddled close together, which made communication easier and left more space outside the town for agricultural production but also restricted the public areas available for people to get together. The royal highway from Toledo to Andalusia created the need for mesones, which were a combination of inns for travelers and taverns for Yébenes residents. There were two sharp divisions in time that governed male sociability. Daytime was for working, while nighttime was for so-

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cializing, and festival days were, like night, a time for resting and for special forms of socializing, while ordinary days were for working. The categorization of space and time into special units helped determine where, when, and how men would interact and, therefore, where and when conflict would occur. The cemetery was an important public space. While Camacho (and others) used the churchyard as a place of sanctuary when the justicia wanted to arrest him, all the townsfolk frequented the cemetery for more mundane purposes. One had to pass through the cemetery to get to the parish church, so before and after Mass were times when people congregated. While leaving Mass one day in 1613 Pedro Cid and Roque de Cervantes threatened each other in the cemetery by putting their hands on their swords, and Juan Rubio exchanged insults with several men there before Mass one day the following year.∞≥≠ In 1623, a group of young men were accused of having a brawl and throwing rocks at one another in the cemetery on the night of All Saints, an important festival day.∞≥∞ Similarly, a group of men had gathered in the cemetery one afternoon and were joking around (‘‘burlandose’’) when one of them allegedly hit another in the head with a brick.∞≥≤ Like the cemetery, the plaza was a central location in Yébenes, and it was a place for men to meet and transact business. In 1614 Alonso Rodríguez de Sigueroa, a scribe, and Diego López de Ruedas, a constable and jail keeper, brought suit against Juan de Lucas, a shepherd, for calling them bellacos and informers during a dispute that arose from a legal action they had taken against him over a debt. The two o≈cials complained that Lucas had insulted them in the plaza, ‘‘in the presence of many people, shouting, to dishonor us and stain our good reputation.’’∞≥≥ The inn and the tavern, both of which provided a place for residents of Yébenes to eat and drink, were also important institutions of male sociability. Alcohol was available at both taverns and inns, of course, but it is hard to know how much of a role alcohol played in confrontations that arose there. Although borracho (drunkard) was an insult common to the criminal record, the criminal investigations and witnesses almost never describe alcohol as a factor in fueling violence. In fact, only one case from Yébenes used in this book contains a description of inebriation, and that was only incidental to the case. Two men accused of having stabbed a Portuguese bricklayer in Yébenes in 1648 said in their defense that they

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had only laughed at him when he stumbled by them, drunk.∞≥∂ Oddly, Christian moralists also largely ignored the role that alcohol could play in misbehavior. Rodríguez Lusitano made a rare reference to drunkenness when he explained that a man who killed or wounded another man while drunk must pay restitution unless he drank so much that he had no memory of the killing, in which case his sin was drinking too much, not homicide.∞≥∑ Regardless, common sense and the work of historians who have studied drinking in the early modern world suggest that alcohol probably played its customary role in fomenting violence.∞≥∏ It was in an inn that Juan Camacho called the surgeon Gabriel Guerrero a Jew and a cuckold in 1612, and many other confrontations took place inside or just outside inns and taverns. The Good Friday Pardons show that taverns and inns provided a setting for violent encounters all over Castile. In 1641 a tavern keeper reported that Luis Márquez entered his tavern, next to the famous Torre del Oro in Seville, ‘‘pulling on his beard’’ and saying that Domingo Pérez would pay for having spoken ill about him in his absence. Márquez left, and a little while later Pérez entered ‘‘swearing to Christ’’ that Márquez ‘‘was a bastard.’’ Two hours later the tavern keeper saw the two men fighting outside his door, where Pérez received a fatal wound. Other witnesses said that Márquez sent his young son into the tavern to tell Pérez that he was waiting for him outside.∞≥π Here we see the tavern as a regular meeting place where men knew they would find each other and where they could air their grievances against each other in the presence of others. The taverns were also places for groups of young men to frequent while they were enjoying themselves, as a group did in Madrid on the feast day of San Marcos in 1632. They had been playing in a field outside the city, and at dusk they came into a tavern to drink some wine. Reportedly, Jaçinto Collazos took some water and sprayed those who were already seated, and one of them, Antonio García, complained that ‘‘it was a bad thing to do.’’ Collazos responded that ‘‘he had thrown the water, and it was a good thing to do,’’ which led to angry words and a sword fight between all the men present, which in turn resulted in García’s death after he was stabbed through the eye.∞≥∫ The tavern setting probably inspired Collazos in his high-spirited, playful aggression, and the presence of many of his friends discouraged him from backing away from what he had started.

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Streets were the most common public space in Yébenes, and it was here that most confrontations between men took place. The street was a multipurpose area, where not just friends met but also strangers, and where the hierarchy and etiquette of greeting and passing one another was sometimes uncertain. In an example used in chapter 2, one night in 1609 Juan Martín, a tanner, was at the door of an inn with fellow tanner Francisco López de Azeña and a third friend talking to the innkeeper’s wife inside when several other men walked by, including a priest, a silversmith, and Francisco del Corral (the sacristan who had asked Juan Camacho to go home so he could lock up the church). There were conflicting reports about what happened next, but it seems clear that there was a fight, in which Martín’s hand was wounded, over precedence and the etiquette of meeting and passing others in the street. Corral claimed that Martín and his friends were blocking the way so that as he and his friends squeezed by, Corral brushed against Azeña’s cape. Azeña shoved the sacristan, saying, ‘‘May the devil help you, you don’t have to take up the whole street.’’ Gerónimo Mexia enflamed the situation by ordering López and his friends to take o√ their hats and added, ‘‘By God señores, these are bad a√airs if you would treat a man like señor Corral like this when he has not done you any wrong.’’ The tanners answered by putting their hands on their swords, and the fight broke out in which Martín was cut.∞≥Ω This example alone features three transgressions: failing to take o√ one’s hat, touching another man or his clothing, and failing to make way for others. Commentators noted that the streets were an important site of competition for men, and Núñez de Castro allowed that if a man walking through the street was challenged to a duel after attempting to get another man out of his way with his sword, he could accept the challenge ‘‘because it would be a severe mark against a man of honor to turn on his heel, ceding to a man who blocked his path.’’∞∂≠ Indeed, the man who used his sword to push his way through a crowd was merely exercising his right to pass in any public street. ‘‘Likewise,’’ Núñez de Castro argued, ‘‘it is licit to fight in order to defend one’s cape against the man who would ruin it.’’∞∂∞ In other words, both the man pushing with the sword and the man whose cape is brushed by the sword are allowed to fight, which would mean that squeezing a bunch of men together in a small public space would make violence all but unavoidable. Núñez de Castro made pains to explain that only a

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fight right then and there in the street was justified, not a duel at a di√erent time and place. The examples shown above and throughout the previous chapters demonstrate that time was an important component to shaping violent confrontations. As other historians have shown, leisure time was also a time for violence. If violent confrontations grew out of normal socializing, it stands to reason that they would often occur at night and, even more so, during festivals. These were times of leisure, for congregating with friends (and enemies) to drink and socialize. Violent disputes are recorded as having taken place in Yébenes on the feast days (and nights) of San Marcos, All Saints, the Forty Martyrs, Christmas, Candlemas, San Sebastián, and especially Corpus Christi. Violence also broke out on the days of bullfights, which were often staged to celebrate these holidays. Nighttime and festivals also meant that groups of young men would go through the streets singing and making music. In 1634 three men were singing one night while leaning against a wall in Yébenes when two other young men repeatedly passed by them in the street. Finally one of the singers challenged them to explain ‘‘why they had passed by so many times,’’ which quickly led to a sword fight from which several of them received light wounds.∞∂≤ And in 1630, Andrés Galán and two companions were walking through the street at night when they met a group of young shepherds who were singing as they made their way through the town. One of Galán’s companions, his cousin, explained to the authorities that the shepherds asked Galán and his friends, ‘‘Why have you not gone to bed?’’ and Galán responded, ‘‘Why haven’t you?’’ The shepherds then called Galán and his friends ‘‘the most untroubled cuckolds,’’ which led to a riposte by Galán and another sword fight in which Galán was wounded in the forehead.∞∂≥ Similarly, one night in 1609 Juan Rubio, a constable, received a stab wound while making the rounds after he and his fellow constables first chased away one group of young men, ordering them to go home, then got mixed up in a fight between two gangs of youths, one of whom had been making music together.∞∂∂ Singing and carousing was a favorite activity of young men throughout Castile, as the Good Friday Pardons show. In Quete in 1640, the justicia discovered that a group of young men who were singing and playing the guitar one night went to the house of Ana de Alcoçer, a single young woman who had attracted their

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attention by speaking with some of them on occasion. They continued their raucous behavior until Ana’s brother Benito came out of the house with a drawn sword and his cape wrapped around his arm—in other words, ready to duel—and told them to stop. One of the singers, Tomás de Torres, spoke back to Benito and started a fight in which a third man trying to separate them received a mortal blow.∞∂∑ Legal authorities were aware of the dangers that raucous singing created. The Nueva recopilación noted that in 1564 Philip II had outlawed singing in the streets or plazas by day or night under the pain of one hundred lashes.∞∂∏ The provocation of young men singing also blended into other causes of confrontation, such as defying the constabulary or protecting one’s sister from unwanted attention. Burlas were a central part of male sociability. Covarrubias defined it as ‘‘to pretend something that, in anger, would give cause for a fight,’’ and the term was a catchall that men in Yébenes used to describe friendly situations that became violent and sometimes to excuse their behavior during what seemed to be violent confrontations.∞∂π One episode of burlas in Yébenes that turned to violence, seemingly accidentally, took place in 1627 when the blacksmith Juan Rubio came out of his house one night and saw five other young men going down the street singing. As several of the young men later explained to the investigating authorities, Rubio called them fools for not going to bed, and two of them drew their swords threateningly. Rubio said, ‘‘What obnoxious burlas these are.’’ As Rubio turned to go back into his house, Juan de Villareal, one of the singers, touched Rubio’s cape with his sword and cut his neck. The young men claimed to be playing, and right after he cut his neck Villareal said, ‘‘Pardon me, Juan Rubio.’’ Rubio himself acknowledged that they were only ‘‘burlando with him’’ in the private pardon that he granted them and also in the fee de amistades that they made.∞∂∫ This seems to be a case in which aggressive play, pretending to engage in violent hostility, led to an injury when a mistake was made. A similar case from 1626 further displays the ambiguity of burlas. Gabriel Guerrero (eighteen years old and probably the son of the surgeon Gabriel Guerrero whom Juan Camacho insulted) was leaving an inn with some friends on the night of San Sebastián’s Day when they encountered Juan Gómez, the son of a scribe. Guerrero poked at Gómez with his sword to get him to move, and Gómez replied, ‘‘Go with God, brother, what do

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you want of me?’’ and moved out of his way. Later that night the two men met again in the cemetery, and as Guerrero explained to the justicia, he greeted Gómez with a friendly ‘‘Que ay, Juan?’’ a phrase similar to ‘‘what’s up?’’ Gómez responded with an insult, and as Guerrero asked, ‘‘What manner of speaking is that?’’ Gómez hit him in the shoulder with his sword. The blow was so light, Guerrero testified later, that he did not realize at first that he had been cut, and he did not draw his own sword in response because ‘‘he understood that he did it as a burla.’’∞∂Ω Here again the line was blurred between aggressive, agonistic play and violent confrontation. At first Guerrero seemed to be pretending to pursue a dispute about precedence in the street, threatening Gómez to move out of the way with a mock-hostile gesture. Did Gómez realize at first that his friend was kidding? His response later in the cemetery was a similar, playfully aggressive act, where Guerrero assumed he was joking but did in fact receive a wound that, although slight, later required the services of a surgeon. If it was hard for the actual participants in a situation to know whether they were playing or fighting, onlookers were even more confused. In 1634 Bartolomé Serrano was wounded one night when he saw his cousin Juseppe Serrano and his friend Francisco González fighting with swords. They were playing, but Serrano thought they were fighting in earnest and rushed to stop his two friends from hurting each other, shouting, ‘‘Peace! Peace!’’ While trying to separate them, he himself was wounded in the hand.∞∑≠ It was the ambiguity of burlas that made Luis de Puente list it in his confessor’s manual as a sin along with the more serious o√enses of spiteful words and gossip.∞∑∞ Evidence from the Good Friday Pardons suggests that throughout Castile, burlas played a central role in the social life of men, frequently sparking trouble. In Seville in 1630 a group of men were resting in a shed at noon when Manuel de Toledo, a crier for the city who was described as ‘‘mulatto,’’ arrived and began to ‘‘burlar’’ with Francisco Manzano, each of them calling the other a drunkard. According to one of the men in the shed, Manzano then stood up, holding a sword, smiling, and saying, ‘‘I have to see if this drunkard is brave.’’ A companion grabbed his arm, asking, ‘‘Where are you going with the sword?’’ and Manzano replied, ‘‘To give him two blows with the flat of my sword to see if he grumbles.’’ When struck, however, Toledo called out, ‘‘Ay, he has killed me!’’ and he later died.∞∑≤ Again, it is hard to tell whether Manzano was truly just continuing the

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aggressive play with Toledo and misjudged his blow or whether he felt Toledo had crossed a line and was trying to punish him in earnest. In the same city in 1641, Cristobal Ponce killed a man during an a√ray that resulted from burlas. Ponce had tried to buy some figs from a shopkeeper, but the merchant would not let him have them because Ponce already owed him a real. A soldier nearby o√ered to loan Ponce the money if he paid him interest, but Ponce refused, saying, ‘‘Get out of here.’’ Joking, the soldier replied, ‘‘If I were not a soldier I would beat you with the flat of this sword,’’ gesturing with the sheathed weapon. Ponce gave him a shove, and the soldier responded by attacking him, which led to Ponce killing the soldier.∞∑≥ As usual, it is hard to tell just where the line was crossed from aggressive play to violence. In these two examples the authorities evidently recognized the ambiguous nature of burlas and blamed the deceased for taking things too far, pardoning both the killers. In Yébenes, too, suspects often claimed that a fracas was just an incident of burlas when explaining to the fiel del juzgado why they a√ronted or assaulted another man. Normal sociability between men was so aggressive, so competitive, and so close to violent confrontation anyway that it was easy for the magistrates to believe that playfulness could evolve into real violence. For these reasons, violence arising from misunderstandings and accidents while men were playing was ubiquitous throughout the Good Friday Pardons, noticeably more common, proportionately, than they are in the cases from Yébenes. Gaming and gambling best encapsulate the combative nature of normal behavior. Given the troublesome nature of the relations between Juan Camacho and his neighbors in Yébenes, it is perhaps surprising that his card-playing session on the steps of the church that night in 1612 did not itself lead to violence. Games, and especially wagering, encompassed competition, fairness, and performance before one’s peers. Gambling featured an aspect of financial risk and loss and the possibility of a dispute over credit if a loser found he could not cover his obligations immediately. Games that appeared in the criminal cases include naipes, or cards; bolos, a form of bowling; and some more casual games that involved throwing sticks or other things. In 1648 a group of men were gambling in a house belonging to one of them when a quarrel broke out over the loan of two quartos between Francisco Guzmán and Pedro de Burgos. Guzmán explained that Burgos went out onto the patio of the house and the rest of them followed him out and drew their swords to prevent a fight because

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they were ‘‘all very good friends.’’ Still, when Guzmán followed the rest to the patio no one could prevent Burgos from stabbing Guzmán in the scu∆e that ensued.∞∑∂ In another example in 1609, the justicia investigated Juan Bautista after he had a dispute with Juan Carrasco over a game of bowling. Bautista struck Carrasco in the head with one of the balls, neatly symbolizing the issue of the dispute while employing the closest weapon at hand.∞∑∑ Another episode from 1634 further shows the importance of public performance in competitive games. A group of men were bowling, and Pedro Ruiz Calero lost six maravedís gambling on the game. Juan Moran explained to the authorities that he laughed at Ruiz Calero and received a kick in return. The two began to argue and then to fight, and Ruiz Calero hit Moran in the head with a rock.∞∑∏ In another incident from 1630, witnesses explained that some men from Yébenes were playing a game with men from another locale when Francisco de la Cruz, a resident of Yébenes, arrived. De la Cruz started to praise the outsiders and announced he was willing to bet that they would win. Juan Hidalgo and two others from Yébenes ‘‘took o√ense’’ at de la Cruz for favoring the outsiders and let him know their feelings. De la Cruz drew a dagger in response, and others had to make peace between them twice before the a√air finally settled down.∞∑π Being excluded from gaming and gambling could be just as painful as being criticized or laughed at. In an example mentioned in a previous chapter, the slave Antón attacked Blas Ruiz with a sword one night after Ruiz refused to lend him some money to wager over lots.∞∑∫ Gaming set male socializing in a context where there were clearly defined winners and losers. The sporting took place before groups of onlookers, who felt free to make remarks on the course of play. There was a great deal of risk in these games—risk of losing in front of one’s peers, risk of being criticized or mocked, risk of financial loss, and risk of jeopardizing one’s credit to cover one’s losses. The worst risk of all was the risk of not being included, as in the example with Antón the slave. Of course, the other side of all this risk was the possibility of gaining prestige, praise, and money by performing well before one’s peers, and this is part of what drew men to gaming in early modern society. The Good Friday Pardons show that these risks and attractions were not limited to Yébenes. In Madrid in 1624 witnesses reported that Pedro de la Lora, frustrated at having lost money while playing cards, threw the cards at his opponent,

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Juan de la Torre, which started an argument. The card players were a rough group, including a soldier and a fencing master. The argument led to a duel when Christoval Ochoa pushed de la Torre, and the two men agreed to meet the next day in the garden of the convent of San Jerónimo (because de la Torre did not have his sword with him at the gaming table). De la Torre was killed.∞∑Ω Also in Madrid, two tailors visited a secret tavern one night to eat, play cards with the tavern keeper, and drink wine. The tailors started a quarrel with the tavern keeper, Juan de Villa, which turned into a fight. Villa’s servant, who had left the room, heard his master say, ‘‘Ay, they have killed me,’’ but before the servant could help him get to a priest for confession, Villa died.∞∏≠ These and other examples suggest some of the possibilities for violent confrontation arising from the tensions that gaming and gambling placed on men in early modern Castile. No wonder that Castillo de Bobadilla advised the corregidores to keep an eye open for illegal gambling, by which he mainly meant cards and dice for high stakes, and the houses that hosted it, for all the usual moral reasons but also because they were the ‘‘cause of arguments and brawls.’’∞∏∞

conclusion The components of male reputation in Castile were not so di√erent from what was expected of men in other parts of Europe. Historians of early modern England and France have found that men were supposed to control their households—especially the women, and especially their sexual behavior.∞∏≤ Credit also played a large role in male reputations in England and France.∞∏≥ And oficio played an important role in the reputation and self-perception of artisans throughout Europe—perhaps more so than we have found in the criminal records of Castile, since guilds tended to be stronger in northern Europe.∞∏∂ Constables throughout Europe were especially vulnerable to attacks on their performance, or misperformance, of their duties.∞∏∑ The aggressive, teasing play that marked male sociability in the Castilian criminal archives was also widespread throughout early modern Europe and Latin America, especially at night and during festivals.∞∏∏ More important, those who study patriarchy in early modern Europe have found that a rowdy youthfulness marked a separate stage for men between childhood and full adulthood. Young men who did not yet have the means to establish themselves as husbands and householders, with all the status and responsibilities that came with those positions, set

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up an alternative masculinity based on gathering together and causing trouble.∞∏π What, then, did male honor consist of in early modern Castile? It would be easy to say that the four categories of male reputation that caused violent confrontations in the criminal records—protecting the family, credit and debt, oficio, and aggressive sociability—were the four components of honor. But certainly these four aspects of life can stand on their own as important qualities for men across many cultures and times, including those where honor is not prominent, so we should resist this simple conclusion.∞∏∫ Furthermore, there is no way of knowing what other elements of male identity might appear in di√erent historical sources. Ecclesiastical court records that dealt with cases of adultery, impotence, and bigamy might add such elements as sex, husband-hood, and fatherhood.∞∏Ω Civil court records that handled inheritance and lawsuits over property might also have something to add. Therefore, it might be wiser to focus on the one thing common to all four categories found in the criminal records: if a crisis arose in one of these categories, Castilian men could choose to address it by using the rhetoric of honor. Why? What advantage did honor language, including elements of the duel, bring to those who employed it? Insults and violence were illegal, and in each case whose records exist for us to read today their use attracted the scrutiny of the criminal justice system, so why risk such attention-getting behavior as shouting and swordplay in the streets, cemeteries, taverns, and plazas? One answer is that each time a man engaged the rhetoric of honor during a confrontation with an adversary, the focus shifted dramatically from whatever issue began the dispute to the character of the men involved. In practical terms, this meant turning attention away from a potentially humiliating situation. When Juan Camacho assaulted and slandered María Juárez and put his hand on Olalla Jiménez, Francisco Moreno erased the humiliation done to his wife and sister-in-law (and to himself if he could not protect them) by attacking Camacho and shifting the attention of onlookers to two men fighting with swords. When Camacho accused Diego Rodríguez of owing him thirty reales in the middle of the street, Rodríguez countered the public assertion that he neither could nor would pay his debts, indirectly giving Camacho the lie and causing a fight. And when Camacho was forced to undergo the humiliation of being disarmed by the justicia and seeking sanctuary in the churchyard, he retaliated by asserting

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himself against the alcalde who passed by him one night, Diego Palaçios, accusing him and his colleagues of betraying their o≈ces, flourishing bricks to replace the sword he had lost, and threatening to kill him. Camacho further tried to erase the stigma of fleeing to the churchyard by having his friends join him there for the competitive, manly pursuit of playing cards and, presumably, gambling. Each of these events began with a man threatened by public humiliation: I cannot protect my family members, I cannot pay my debts, I cannot prevent the alcaldes from exerting their power over me, I cannot come and go as I please. Each of the events ended with a man using the rhetoric of honor to o√er a counterimage of himself to his neighbors: I am a dangerous man, fully capable of violently defending myself, my reputation, and my family, and my opponents are weak, lying men who do not live up to their obligations. The more flair and ostentation a man could muster in his display, brandishing bricks, drawing swords, and shouting especially damning epithets such as whore or Jew, the better chance he had to make people forget the humiliating event that had just taken place. So for all the menace, bluster, and real deadly violence that men could summon, conflicts over honor were really exercises in concealment.∞π≠ Although Castilian men were vulnerable on many fronts that were seemingly unrelated to one another, when they employed the rhetoric of honor they articulated a vision of themselves as fully moral, integrated into their community, and wholly in control of their lives. It helped that the rhetoric of honor divided male character into two polarized groups: the completely honorable and the completely dishonorable. In their criminal complaints, men boasted of their honor, buena fama (good name), and reputación, heaping one positive adjective on top of another to boost their claims to good standing in the community. In chapter 3, we touched on the incident in Yébenes in 1627 when Juan López Portillo and Juan de la Calle de Abila defended themselves against accusations that they had caused a disturbance, making merry to celebrate having just been elected o≈cials of next year’s bullfight, jokingly shouting into a house for horses to ride to Madrid, and supposedly provoking someone else to fire shotgun at them out a window. They brought witnesses who swore that the two were ‘‘very honorable men, calm and peaceful, good Christians and fearful of God, removed from commotion or disputes, and that they were not accustomed to go around at night creating disorder or causing scandal in the town, but instead set very good examples.’’∞π∞ Men also used honor

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rhetoric to invoke every negative adjective possible in their e√orts to discredit their opponents. In 1647 Francisco García ‘‘el Gordillo’’ (Fatty) and Juan Lobon, also known as ‘‘Roberto el Diablo’’ (Roberto the Devil), were accused of stealing acorns in the village of Méntrida near Madrid, threatening the villagers who tried to stop them, and breaking into a jail to rescue an associate. A witness said, ‘‘It is notorious that Francisco García el Gordillo is a criminal man of wicked life and that he has caused scandal in all the places [nearby] by consorting with Gypsies and making thefts and extortions and many other things, as is notorious.’’∞π≤ Here the witness linked the violence, theft, and dishonesty of the suspects together and for good measure alluded to racial impurity by associating them with Gypsies. Throughout the Good Friday Pardons and the records of the fiel del juzgado accusers did the same, as when Pedro Hernández de Pedraza was called a ‘‘disreputable Moor, Jew, and thief ’’ in Yébenes in 1609.∞π≥ The logic of the rhetoric of honor was clear: if a man was good and reputable, he was good and reputable in every aspect of his character. If a man possessed any flaw, then every aspect of his character was bad and disreputable. Male honor was less a static set of values or beliefs than an idea that could be invoked in order to defend oneself when challenged.∞π∂ This is why the code of honor seems at once so real and concrete but so ambiguous. It was ambiguous because no one knew exactly which of the symbols of masculinity a man would choose to defend, in any given circumstance, with the rhetoric of honor. Hats, beards, mustaches, faces, swords, daggers, and capes were the most tangible signs of male identity and therefore, as symbols of male reputation, were vulnerable to attack and necessary to defend. Juan Camacho, for example, placed great importance on his right to carry a sword and dagger, and much of his conflicts with the justicia of Yébenes stemmed from their attempt to enforce the ban on carrying arms at night. Just as important, men were expected to make public performances, displaying their grasp of the proper elements of male sociability under the scrutiny of their peers in such activities as gambling, burlas, competitive gaming, swordplay, and drinking and carousing. In 1632, a group of shepherds and peasants were staying in a cabin outside the town of Priego near Córdoba, and they began to play, throwing their hats and other things at one another. Someone struck Diego Alonso Povedano in the face with

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sheep dung, and he grabbed the hat of Juan Carillo de Navas and used it to wipe the grime o√ his face. Carillo de Navas took o√ense and stabbed Povedano with his dagger, killing him.∞π∑ Throwing sheep dung was part of the men’s aggressive game, and Povedano was not o√ended by being struck. Carillo de Navas did not accept the soiling of his hat as part of the game, however, and Povedano’s misjudgment led to violent conflict and death. He failed to see where the performance of an agonistic game ended and grave threats to important male symbols began. Performance was also at issue in 1640 when a group of soldiers in a village in Guipúzcoa were dancing to a guitar being played in a cider tavern. Two bystanders, Jacobe and Domingo de Arrite, called out to one dancer, ‘‘Give us a turn, and if you did not know how to dance any better, then why were you dancing at all?’’ One of the soldiers took it as an a√ront and began threatening the two brothers, and the a√air ended with the two of them killing the soldier outside the tavern.∞π∏ Again, criticizing the performance of an important male ritual led to a violent confrontation. Contrary to what Don Juan Roca believed in The Painter of His Dishonor, honor was not a trap that took away a man’s reputation through no fault of his own and then forced him to seek revenge. Rather, it was simply a tool that one could choose to use, or not use, in one’s social interactions. When Diego Alonso Povedano wiped excrement o√ his face with Juan Carillo de Navas’s hat, Carillo de Navas chose to invoke the rhetoric of honor. He could have accepted the insult to his hat as part of the game, or he could have taken o√ense the minute that others began to throw things at him. When faced with a problem in their interpersonal relations, men like Carillo de Navas or Juan Camacho could choose to respond with an a√ront. Once this happened, the man’s opponent could choose to calm the situation, thus ending the dispute at least temporarily, or to escalate it. In either case, the dispute would have shifted from the immediate issue that sparked the confrontation, such as a scribe owing Camacho thirty reales or an alcalde trying to confiscate his sword because it was night, to a more sweeping challenge involving the entire character of the men involved. The e√ect of violent confrontation was to unite the disparate symbols and roles of manhood into a single issue—honor—through a process that the men involved understood well. The rhetoric of honor upheld the idea of a unified, coherent character that would act consistently in any circumstance, and made it possible for violent confrontation to play this

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role. By disputing a√ront, truth, and reputation, men were able to dispute and resolve any issues about the many unrelated aspects of male reputation that came into question. A man’s honor did not rest simply on his ability to protect the sexual reputations of the women in his family. In fact, honor rhetoric, with its heavy emphasis on sexual slurs such as whore and cuckold, obscured the issue and made sex seem a much larger part of honor than it truly was. The honor plays, by overemphasizing sex and adultery, helps keep this misperception alive today. Tellingly, the real cause of the historical incident on which The Final Duel of Spain was based was not a rivalry between two gentlemen over a woman, as Calderón portrayed it, but an argument that began while playing a ball game.∞ππ Once we understand how crucial the rhetoric of honor was for mediating and accommodating the demands of manhood, the advice of the anti-dueling writers to remember that true honor is Christian virtue seems facile. Of course the men who invoked the honor code wanted to be virtuous men and ‘‘good Christians’’—and they kept insisting that they were in their depositions. Indeed, it was their failure to live up to the moral standards of their community, and the shame this incurred, that led them to reach for honor rhetoric. The rhetoric of honor was an excellent weapon for erasing what anthropologists have called the reverse of honor: shame. Moralists hoping to replace honor with a sense of Christian morality made a mistake when they targeted rage as the emotion that men needed to quell. They neglected the real emotion that governed honor: shame. Anger was just a reaction to humiliation, channeled by the rhetoric of honor into insulting language or violence.∞π∫ Honor was not so important because it was an alternative ethical system. Instead it gained its importance because it was so useful as a way to prevent, or to mask, a lack of virtue: an inability to protect one’s family, to pay one’s debts, to live up to one’s o≈ce or calling, or to socialize properly among other men. Not all of these virtues would be recognized as Christian by the moralists, but nonetheless they were values held by Castilian communities to be essential for anyone hoping to claim full membership in those communities. We can say, therefore, that the most ascetic of the Christian moralists were the only ones to accurately diagnose the problem of honor. They realized that the problem was too deeply rooted in male behavior to be solved by simply equating true honor with Christian virtue. Self-loathing, self-abnegation, and death to the world

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(that is, indi√erence to the opinion of others) were the only ways to fight honor. ‘‘Love dishonor,’’ Luis de Granada counseled.∞πΩ Honor was a strategy for avoiding humiliation, so only by embracing humiliation like the martyred saints could one keep concerns about honor out of one’s life. Although it is doubtful whether embracing dishonor was something that most Christian men could accomplish in Golden Age Castile, it was probably the only viable alternative to a life in which honor played such a prominent role.

chapter 5

Women

on march 16, 1611, mass had just begun in the parish church of Yébenes when worshippers were disturbed by the sounds of two women shouting at each other. They also heard a blow, followed by Ana Díaz crying out that María Fernández had struck her in the face with a wooden plank, and as they turned they saw the swelling on Díaz’s head. Blood appeared on Fernández’s head too as she shouted, ‘‘Look what she did to me,’’ while women nearby hastened to stop the fight. Judicial authorities found that the two had been fighting over seats in the church. The criminal investigation ended with each party in the dispute formally pardoning the other and the presiding judge levying a fine on both women, ordering them to keep the peace.∞ At first glance, this incident would seem to be nothing more than an insignificant squabble, and the records of the criminal investigation provide little further detail. However, a di√erent picture emerges when the fight between Ana Díaz and María Fernández is examined alongside dozens of other criminal cases involving women, violence, and slander. The women in church acted on their own behalf to defend their honor, and they employed the same rhetoric of honor, including the words and rituals of dueling, that men used. Like men, women in Yébenes defined their honor broadly, invoking it during disputes that concerned their economic and social roles and rank, and when challenged they did not hesi-

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tate to fight back. Placed in this context, the fight over seats in a church resembles the fights that broke out between men in Yébenes in streets and plazas over precedence and social status. The women of Yébenes, therefore, challenge the classic view that a rigid honor code characterized traditional Mediterranean societies, constricting women’s behavior and circumscribing their identities. Historians and literary critics have long argued that early modern Spanish culture valued sexual fidelity among women so much that it excluded all other components of reputation. In an analysis of early modern Seville, for example, Mary Elizabeth Perry portrayed the concerns that Spaniards had for women in society through the themes of enclosure and purity. In this view, social order was dependent on gender order, ‘‘an ethos of gendered honor’’ that prescribed enclosure for women. Literal enclosure inside houses and convents, as well as metaphorical enclosure in terms of passivity and obedience to men, defined the public image of women. Honor was a burdensome social code that victimized women, placing constraints on their behavior, especially their sexual behavior. Insofar as honor determined women’s identity, it did so in a negative sense, providing a variety of ways that women could deviate from accepted social norms and bring shame to herself and her family.≤ The tradition of the anthropology of the Mediterranean confirms this understanding of the honor code’s impact on women, positing female ‘‘shame’’ as the corollary to male honor. Classically expounded by Julian Pitt-Rivers, the argument is that while a man’s reputation was based on honor, a positive value defined by being able to control women and assert oneself, a woman’s reputation was based on safeguarding her sense of shame, a negative value defined solely by the absence of disgraceful behavior, such as engaging in illicit sex.≥ What the historiographical and anthropological traditions can agree to above all is that ‘‘for all women’’ in early modern Europe, ‘‘honor was a sexual matter.’’∂ The behavior of the two women in church also defied the portrayal of women’s honor on the Golden Age stage. Consider Mencía de Acuña in Calderón’s The Physician of His Honor. Her former suitor, Prince Enrique, has unexpectedly arrived at the house she shares with her husband, Don Gutierre Alfonso Solís. Here she reacts to discovering the Prince in her house:

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Ah heaven! Oh, who could, with honor’s permission, vent emotions here! Oh, who could cry out and break the silence, frozen prisons, where the flame was imprisoned that now, turning into ashes, is dying while still saying: ‘‘Here was love!’’ But what am I saying? What is this, heaven, what is this? I am who I am. The air must return the repeated syllables that sounded; because although released, things about which I must be silent must not be made public because it is well known that I am not to feel my emotions so my only recourse of having feelings now is having desires only to conquer them; for there is no virtue without experience. Gold is perfected in the crucible . . . thus my honor will be perfected in itself when I am able to conquer myself, for it cannot be perfected without experience.∑ Honor, for Mencía, consists wholly of self-denial and sexual and emotional abstinence. Against Mencía’s fervent opposition, the prince resumes his pursuit of her. Despite her innocence, her husband begins to suspect that Enrique is courting his wife, urged on by the discovery of a dagger whose hilt matches that of the prince’s sword. Even though Mencía never responds to Enrique’s advances, and indeed frantically tries to persuade the prince

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to leave her alone, Gutierre grows to believe that she is dallying with the prince and plots to have Mencía killed. Thus Mencía, simply through the unwanted advances of another man, is thought by her husband to have lost her honor and to have jeopardized his own, demanding a violent solution. Her fate rests solely on her reputation for sexual purity, and once suspected of impurity she is powerless to prevent her murder. Other Golden Age honor plays concurred with The Surgeon of His Honor. Of course, all the plays that portray the stereotype of male honor— protecting female sexual purity—also portray the corresponding stereotype of female honor based on chastity and fidelity. Lope de Vega’s Peribáñez and the Commander of Ocaña, Fuenteovejuna, Punishment without Vengeance, and The Best Alcalde, the King, and Calderón’s The Alcalde of Zalamea, The Painter of His Dishonor, and Secret Insult, Secret Vengeance all feature a woman whose honor is lost, or thought to be lost, through sexual misconduct. Some of these plays feature adultery, but others imply that rape also meant the loss of a woman’s honor, despite her absolute lack of complicity in the shaming act. Isabel, the daughter of Pedro Crespo in The Alcalde of Zalamea whose rape Crespo eventually avenges by killing Captain Don Álvaro de Ataide, laments after being attacked that her brother did not find her in the forest. Her brother Juan had been searching for her to save her from the captain, but he came too late, and Isabel hid in shame. Now, however, she wishes he had found and killed her: ‘‘I want to cry out so he will return / with an even more vengeful rage / and grant me death.’’∏ Then she discovers her father in the forest and believes that he will kill her once he learns she has been raped (he does not).

christianity and women’s conduct Christian moralists who targeted a female audience largely agreed with the honor plays’ conventions of proper feminine behavior and the dire consequences of defying them. As a crucial part of their overall goal of reinvigorating Christian life in the sixteenth century, humanist writers in particular wrote important and influential discussions of women’s conduct, including Juan Luis Vives’s Education of a Christian Woman (Instrucción de la mujer cristiana, 1528; translated from the original Latin version of 1523, De institutione feminae christianae) and Luis de León’s The Perfect Wife (La perfecta casada, 1583).π Another less-known humanist writing on women was Juan de Espinosa’s Dialogue in Praise of Women (Diálogo en

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laude de las mujeres, 1580). Members of religious orders, perhaps drawing on their experience of pastoral care, also produced books focusing on the spiritual guidance of women. These works include the Franciscan Antonio de Guevara’s To the Recently Married (Á los recién casados, published in his Familial Letters, or Epístolas familiares, in 1539), the Franciscan Juan de la Cerda’s Principles of Life for All Estates of Women (Vida política de todos los estados de mugeres, 1599), and the Jesuit Gaspar Astete’s Treatise on the Government of the Family, and on the Estate of Widows and Maidens (Tratado del govierno de la familia, y estado de las viudas y donzellas, 1603). The authors all overwhelmingly agreed that women must safeguard their sexual purity, and must be willing to go to great lengths to do so. Gaspar Astete summarized the conventional wisdom when he argued that unmarried girls (donzellas—women from age ten to twenty, or until they marry, according to Juan de la Cerda) should ‘‘be friends of enclosure’’ and stay indoors and work with their hands. Parents should shut and lock all the doors and even windows to the house, to prevent not only the girl’s exit and the entrance of strangers but also the opportunity for someone to speak with or even see the girl. In this way, a girl’s chastity and reputation would remain intact until the day she left for her husband’s house or a convent. Astete went so far as to say that a girl who lost her virginity in her father’s house was guilty of adultery, because just as a wife’s body belonged to her husband, before marriage a daughter’s body belonged to her father. Neglecting one’s chastity, or even occasioning a rumor to that e√ect, could only bring shame on the girl’s family and her entire lineage.∫ Astete was no maverick; he was careful to refer to his sources in marginal notes, pointing to the Council of Trent and St. Thomas Aquinas. Distilling the prescriptions of the more authoritative theologians, he was a popularizer of o≈cial doctrine who wrote in a more accessible, conversational tone. Other conduct manual writers went further, fashioning a metaphor between the walls of a house and the body. Juan de Espinosa cautioned that ‘‘it is important for virgins to put the greatest safeguards on their eyes and ears, since through them indecent love likes to inject its venom and lead it up to the heart.’’Ω He adds that the windows to the house should remain shut, and that women should keep their mouths shut too, for, as the proverb has it, ‘‘Women and trout, both caught through the mouth.’’∞≠ And these were the words of a man who thought of himself as defending a positive view of women. Eyes, ears,

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mouth—the entrances to a woman’s body, like the entrances to her house, must remain firmly closed.∞∞ In the most pure distillation of how early modern Spanish authorities on morals imagined women’s ideal behavior, Antonio de Guevara claimed that if a woman could only possess one virtue, that virtue should be shame (vergüenza), the safeguard of sexual purity.∞≤ Juan de la Cerda agreed, calling shame the best thing women, especially maidens, could possess. Shame was not a virtue but a defense of virtue, and the best aspect of shame was the blush, when the body itself feels and displays shame: ‘‘Thus as love of honor fixes the heart to virtue, also shame, which is a brother emotion of it, keeps it from vices.’’∞≥ According to Cerda, shame and the love of God coincided in their e√ects, and indeed the shame of having one’s neighbors know her vices was more e√ective than the love of God in keeping women away from disgrace.∞∂ Juan Luis Vives counseled that chastity ‘‘is the royal standard of all the other virtues, because if she has it no one need search for the others, and if she does not have it, no one ever looks for others.’’∞∑ Like the honor plays and modern anthropologists, moralists agreed that honor for girls was not a positive accumulation of virtues so much as it was the lack of any staining vice. Also like the playwrights and anthropologists, moralists asserted that a girl’s sexual purity determined the fate of her parents’ honor. Cerda emphasized the di≈culty of raising girls, since if they became sinful, they would ‘‘dishonor’’ and ‘‘defame’’ their relatives. Raising girls well, however, would bring honor to the parents.∞∏ Vives painted a lurid picture of the fate awaiting a girl who loses her virginity: ‘‘What pain is there for your parents? What infamy for your family? What grief for your friends? What moaning for your relatives? What tears for those who raised you? . . . Consider then, oh unhappy one, consider (and not lightly) the invective, the reproaches, the insults of your parents, of your family, of your friends and neighbors cursing at your vice and at the hour of your birth, for placing disgrace on your house, shame on those who raised you, a stain on your honor, pain in your life, and punishment on your soul.’’∞π The passage runs on like this for some time. If all the moralists concurred that strict enclosure was necessary to ensure virginity, they di√ered somewhat on their advice for married women. Luis de León acknowledged that being a wife was di√erent from being a nun, in that housewifery was an important part of their duties.

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Warning against women who chose to compete with other women in beauty and similarly trivial matters while neglecting the maintenance of the house and the improvement of their husbands’ estates, Luis de León acknowledged that women had a duty and virtue beyond sexual purity.∞∫ Nevertheless, despite the obligations married women would have had to purchase goods and carry out other business connected to maintaining the house, he emphasized that married women should leave the house rarely.∞Ω Vives agreed, arguing that married women should leave the house even less than maidens, for they had already found what they were looking for outside the house: a husband. When they did go out to the markets, they should go with a covered head and vergüenza on the face. Indeed, it would be best to send older women—meaning no-longer-sexual women—out to the markets if possible.≤≠ Espinosa was also ambivalent on the issue of married women outside of their houses, although he did acknowledge that women had to go out for business. Mixing his metaphors, he cited the proverb ‘‘Women and hens, both lost easily through roaming,’’ then explained that the sheep who leaves her corral is easily taken by wolves, the dove who leaves the dovecote taken by hawks, and so on.≤∞ The goal of all this enclosure was, as for maidens, sexual purity. Vives explained that the chastity of a married woman was even more important than that of an unmarried one, since losing it o√ends two others: her husband and God.≤≤ One more important point that Christian moralists had for women was that as crucial as it was to live chastely, it was equally important to appear chaste. For Astete, the point of enclosure and watchfulness was to preserve the reputation of the young maiden, who should continually guard her ‘‘reputation and esteem.’’≤≥ Luis de León made a similar point concerning married women, arguing that it was the wife’s duty to make her husband trust her.≤∂ Guevara also acknowledged that the standards for honor and virtue were di√erent for women than for men: ‘‘For a man, being a man, it is enough that he is good, even if he does not appear it, but for the woman, being a woman, it is not enough that she be it, unless she appears so.’’≤∑ Guevara went so far as to remark, ‘‘It would be more dangerous for the conscience, but I say less damaging to honor, that a woman should be secretly indecent but not publicly shameless.’’≤∏ The character Mencía of Calderón’s The Physician of His Honor would have done well to heed this advice. Although she remained perfectly chaste, her husband’s

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suspicions of adultery led to her murder. The honor plays, like the Christian moralists, strongly suggest that a woman’s honor rests solely on chastity, and particularly on the outward show of chastity. How can we reconcile these two views of honor—one, from the Golden Age plays and moralists, that rests wholly on sexuality, and another, from the criminal archives, that prompts two women to fight over seats in church? The issue is especially puzzling since Christian moralists, when discussing men, took pains to emphasize that the received idea of honor was very di√erent from religious morality, and that men should reconceive honor as Christian virtue. For women, however, the humanists and the friars were comfortable with the secular standards of honorable women: chastity and enclosure were advised for girls and married women, as for nuns. The criminal records from Yébenes and the Good Friday Pardons o√er a solution, because the voices of the women involved in these criminal complaints reveal that there really were two dimensions of honor. First there was the rhetoric of honor, which most women and men articulated both when speaking to each other in streets and houses and when questioned by judicial authorities. According to the rhetoric of honor, which adhered closely to the dimension of honor found on the Golden Age stage and in prescriptive literature, sex completely defined a woman’s reputation and worth. But when witnesses and litigants described their actual behavior, they revealed a second dimension of honor, in which the components of honor ranged far wider than just sexual behavior, and the defense of honor engaged much more than just the protection provided by men.≤π Among the 313 cases of the fiel del juzgado containing violent crime, 83 involve at least one woman as the victim or aggressor, including 21 with a woman as assailant or defamer, 34 with a woman as the victim of an a√ront or assault, and 28 with women playing both roles. Along with the Good Friday Pardons, these cases provide the sample used here for the study of women, honor, slander, and violence.≤∫ Yébenes is also important because it provides a look at lower-status women in a small town, a group that, in studies of honor, social mores, and women in general, has been neglected in favor of elite, literate, urban women, largely because elite women left behind more written sources for historians to examine. Yébenes was home to a mix of peasants and artisans, and the women there were a largely illiterate group who worked in agriculture and as small-time artisan producers, innkeepers, and ser-

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vants. As the records show, they managed business a√airs alongside their husbands and moved about in the world outside their homes, defying the cloistered ideal of elite Spanish women.≤Ω Perhaps chastity was the only requirement for the honor of noble and wealthy women, but for peasant and artisan women in Yébenes, engagement in the larger world outside their families meant that a wide array of characteristics contributed to their reputations.≥≠

women employing the rhetoric of honor Although sexuality was only one part of female reputation in early modern Castile, it was an important part, and both women and men were concerned with ensuring that women were not thought to have engaged in or invited illicit sex.≥∞ Women’s engagement in the larger world made publicly recognized values important to their reputations. The criminal records of the fiel del juzgado and the Good Friday Pardons can show us only those aspects of female reputation that were contested through violent conflict and brought to the attention of the judicial authorities, so they provide a limited view into what women thought was important to their sense of identity in the community. For example, Luis de León considered skill as a housewife to be an important duty for the perfect wife, and women may have considered a good reputation as a housewife as integral to their honor, but this issue does not appear in the sources used here, perhaps simply because it is not the sort of issue that was likely to appear in criminal suits.≥≤ Instead, we will discuss some of the salient characteristics of female reputation that did appear in Castilian criminal records, including sexual purity, credit and property, a concern to protect the family, and a defense of legal rights, then move on to examine how women acted to defend their reputations. It is best to begin with women’s sexuality, partly because it was an important component of women’s honor but also because sexuality and sexual slurs were such an important part of the language of honor. Echoing the prescriptive literature, the criminal records include sexual language indicating the importance of sexual chastity to a woman’s honor and putting the responsibility for guarding it on the men in her family. In 1611 for example, Antonio Fernández brought suit against Ysabel Fernández for saying that his wife was ‘‘a great whore’’ and the mistress of a priest because she had been seen in the priest’s house. The accusation was a

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‘‘stain on her honor,’’ he added, and because his wife was an honest woman from an honest and honorable family, her attacker deserved punishment.≥≥ Here we have a man claiming that sexual slander was a grievous threat to the honor of his wife, just as the traditional understanding of the honor code would suggest. Whore was perhaps the most common sexual insult expressed toward women in Yébenes. Desvergonzada (shameless) was another particularly common a√ront, as was amancebada (mistress or concubine). Buxona (sodomite) and alcaguetona (procuress) were two other less frequent, but still damning, sexual insults. The primary sexual a√ront for men was cuckold, a way of attacking a man and, indirectly, his wife. The rhetoric of female honor conformed to the ideas of the prescriptive writers and to the modern, anthropologist-influenced view of the honor code. These words, however, were not always intended, or taken, at face value. Just as often, they were convenient weapons for attacking women and their honor, a sleight of hand used in disputes that often had little or nothing to do with sexual conduct. The Castilians were simply resorting to the most powerful a√ronts they could find. In order to peel back the layers between what Castilians said and what they meant we must first of all realize that the term whore did not have the narrow meaning of a woman who exchanged sex for money but was used in a broader sense to designate any woman who engaged in illicit sex with men, especially married men. Calling a woman a whore could also involve the appropriation of more than simply another woman’s husband, including a wide range of economic and social resources taken from another woman’s household, such as food, clothing, and a√ection.≥∂ For example, in 1612 María de Maragon accused Juana Palaçios, the wife of the shoemaker Juan López, of entering the house of Maragon and her husband one night to confront her. According to the complaint, Palaçios asked Maragon ‘‘why did she enter her house to eat with her husband, and that if she denies it then she lies like a proven whore.’’ Maragon denied the accusation, and in response Palaçios struck her in the face with a rod, drawing blood.≥∑ In this case there was no sex involved, but one woman chose to throw the term whore at another during a struggle over the economic and emotional resources that a man could provide. Gestures, too, could be shaming in a sexual way. Merely speaking to a woman could be seen as a first step toward an intimate relationship if the two were not related, so this act was imbued with sexual meaning.≥∏ Gaspar Rodríguez

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brought a criminal case against María Camacha in 1612 for saying, among other things, that ‘‘while you sir are working [your wife] has conversations with the priests of this town.’’≥π Just the hint of illicit sex could be damaging to a woman’s reputation. If recognizing that the term whore incorporated more than simply sex changes our traditional understanding of honor, that understanding strains even further when we find that women’s honor encompassed other aspects of their lives beyond sex and marriage, including their roles in village society. Women participated in the marketplace as buyers and sellers, as debtors and creditors, and as property owners. As wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters, women had important family roles to play and were heavily invested in the social and economic fortunes of their families. While performing these roles, women invoked the rhetoric of honor to help them negotiate disputes with their neighbors—for example, when struggling to maintain networks of credit and debt with other members of their communities and when engaging in feuds and trying to protect members of their families. The previous chapter demonstrated that the management of credit and debt was an important part of men’s reputations. Studies of women and economic issues have tended to focus on women’s ownership and control of property (especially dowries), their role in the workforce, and their performance as managers of households.≥∫ In Spain, as elsewhere in Europe, historians have found that by exercising control over dowries, both while living and through their wills, women were able to exert economic influence in an informal way despite how men, in theory, dominated property owning and economic decision making.≥Ω One thing all these approaches have in common is a focus on the family as the seat of women’s economic abilities, whether as producers, managers, or property owners. But like men, low-status women were involved in the markets of the town. In the currency-poor countryside, participation in the market was largely a function of managing credit and debt, a highly personal process in an age before sophisticated tools of consumer credit were commonplace.∂≠ Criminal records show that by maintaining their own networks of debt and credit outside their houses, women also possessed an autonomous area of economic activity in the public marketplace. While Espinosa invoked folk wisdom when he claimed that women, like hens, were easily lost by roaming, Luis de León showed that he had a better grip of realities for women when he acknowl-

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edged that housewifery, and the business outside the house that it entailed, constituted an important part of a woman’s persona. Like men, women employed the language of honor and dueling when engaged in disputes over debt and credit. According to one witness, one afternoon in 1627 Catalina Maestra approached Isabel López, who was seated at the door of a friend’s house, threw her to the ground, and picked up a rock to hurl at her, all the while calling López a ‘‘bellaca’’ and saying that ‘‘they would indeed settle whether or not she had paid her’’ for some unspecified debt.∂∞ As with men, the security for most debts rested only on a verbal agreement between debtor and creditor, so slander and assault were e√ective means by which to force a disputed payment. Maestra ensured that her grievance against López would be made public by assaulting and a√ronting her in the street, in the view of others. Women did not hesitate to defend their interests against men as well as women, as Ana Gómez showed when trying to collect some money from Pedro García Vélez at a butcher’s shop in 1620. According to a complaint by Juan Rubio Ramos, Gómez’s husband, a tripe seller who was present suggested that Gómez cancel out the debts she and García Vélez had with each other and avoid the need for a physical exchange of coins, a common practice that simplified market exchange and payments. ‘‘Who put him in this?’’ Gómez shot back. Although the tripe seller, Tomás Martín, responded by saying, ‘‘I put myself in this, for you are a sow,’’ and pushed her, Gómez demonstrated that she was willing to defend her interests and her independence as a creditor.∂≤ Both Ana Gómez and Catalina Maestra were married, not widows, but they still had debts that they called their own, and they acted on their own to collect them and to attack those who questioned their right to do so. Again this evidence demonstrates a fissure between the expectations of women held by the elite writers of plays and prescriptive literature and the actual behavior of non-elite women. According to Castilian law, all property owned by a woman, including her dowry, was to be managed by her husband. Contrary to these expectations, however, married women owned, managed, and defended their own property.∂≥ Yébenes was a town too small to support many shops and markets, but the Good Friday Pardons show that in the larger cities where women worked as shopkeepers and market vendors, they had control over setting prices and making such decisions as whether to extend credit to their

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customers. Three examples from Seville will serve to make this point. In 1626 Julián de Aguirre and a friend bought some oysters from a woman and got into an argument with her over the price. Two young coopers, one of them a friend of the oyster seller, came over to support her in the dispute with her customers, which eventually led to Aguirre’s death.∂∂ In another case from a previous chapter, Jerónimo de Chaves, a tailor, sent an apprentice to a butcher’s shop to buy some meat. María de Obiedo was tending the counter of the butcher’s shop and refused to give the boy any meat because Chaves had taken two pounds of meat from her fifteen days earlier and had not yet paid for it. When Chaves arrived in person, along with his son and his son-in-law, and demanded to know why she had not given the meat to his servant, she stood her ground against the three men and refused to extend him any credit until he paid his debt.∂∑ Lastly, in 1647, Juan de la Peña, a sailor from Cádiz, was in Seville and went to buy some sardines. He paid the stall owner for one hundred sardines, and Francisca de Palacios, a mixed-race woman who worked at the stall, counted them out. Although Peña had already paid for the fish, Palacios asked him for another quarto as payment for counting the sardines. The sailor replied that he did not have any more money, and Palacios responded by grabbing the basket and dumping the sardines back onto the pile from which she had picked them, then throwing the basket at Peña. The sailor, as he admitted when questioned, threw the basket back at Palacios’s face and called her a ‘‘shameless mulata Morisca bitch.’’ Witnesses reported that Palacios responded by calling Peña a ‘‘pícaro bastard,’’ but then her husband appeared and stabbed Peña with a dagger in the chest. The sailor died the next evening, leaving behind a pregnant wife in Cádiz.∂∏ In each of these cases, women made decisions about credit and debt that men had to obey or, if they declined, to dispute through the rituals of honor. The oyster seller stuck to her price, Chaves could not get his meat without paying his debt, and the sailor could not escape paying for the services of the woman who counted his sardines. These may seem like small points, but the accumulation of such decisions constituted the credit that people had in their communities. Peña, and perhaps Aguirre, were strangers in the places where they tried to make their purchases, but Chaves was not, and his decision to return to the butcher’s shop with two family members after his apprentice had been denied the meat he re-

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quested testifies to the seriousness that he accorded a woman’s power to give or withhold a sale. Women fought for, and obtained, real power in the informal networks of credit and debt that linked the marketplace with the social world of early modern Castile. Women also became heavily involved in slander and violent confrontation in attempts to defend the interests and reputations of their families, which were often in jeopardy during the feudlike disputes that families carried on with one another in Yébenes. While much is known about conflicts between elite families and clans in medieval and early modern Spain, less is known about families of lower status.∂π There is little evidence in Yébenes of the most murderous type of feuds, vendettas in which members of rival families assassinated each other in a cycle of revenge. However, the artisans and peasants there waged long-standing quarrels against each other over property, inheritance, o≈ce, and rank that were similar to the more deadly feuds of the elite. Alongside the men, and sometimes independent of them, women participated fully in violent family feuds. For example, in 1621 Alonso Carrasco opened a suit against Francisco Esteban, age fifteen, for having called Carrasco’s son Jusepe a son of a whore and kicking him. María Ruiz, Carrasco’s wife and Jusepe’s mother, came out of her house and confronted Esteban. According to Jusepe, Esteban then called her a sow, a wicked woman, and a mestiza, and said, ‘‘I swear to God I have to give you more kicks than your son.’’ Another witness testified that Ruiz responded by calling Esteban a bellaco and a ridiculous fool. This exchange was no isolated incident—many similar episodes of insult, a√ront, and assault passed between the two families throughout that year, and the whole sequence was connected to debts and lawsuits pending between the parents of the two boys.∂∫ In short, there was a feud between the two families, and María Ruiz was centrally involved. Anthropologists and historians who study feuding in the Mediterranean maintain that active participation in vendettas was almost entirely associated with men, but in Yébenes women routinely took part in their family’s conflicts through slander and even assault.∂Ω In 1629, Francisco de la Cruz opened a criminal complaint against Juan de Espinar, his mother, Catalina Sánchez, and his sister, Quiteria Sánchez, for having come to his house and a√ronted him. While Espinar stood outside with his sword drawn and his cape wrapped around his arm, calling de la Cruz a thief and ‘‘the son of a negro . . . from Granada’’ and demanding that de

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la Cruz come out to face him, his mother and sister threw stones at his house. This example, which we have seen previously, was part of a longer dispute, recorded in at least two other criminal investigations, involving death threats, insults, and other a√ronts.∑≠ Women could also be targets of feuding assault, as Josepha Ibáñez found out one day in 1634 when María de Urueña and her husband, Martín Ximénez, walked by her house. Ximénez stopped and said to Ibáñez, ‘‘Look at what I want to say,’’ and then asked her ‘‘why had she gone to the house of the señor alcalde to seek some money that he owed to her husband.’’ Urueña then called out to her husband, ‘‘Come here, Martín, and leave that blessed drunken pícara.’’ Urueña was not trying to prevent a conflict, however, since next she approached Ibáñez and, as Ibáñez testified later, ‘‘pulled my hair, ripped my bonnet, and got up into my face,’’ saying ‘‘many other injurious words to me.’’ Other witnesses testified that they saw Ibáñez’s bonnet on the floor, an important point since it would have been a serious sign of disrespect if Urueña had ripped the bonnet o√ her head and thrown it to the ground. Ibáñez further testified that twenty days earlier Urueña had approached her and called her ‘‘a very cheeky bellaca’’ and threatened to ‘‘score my face and pull out my tongue.’’∑∞ Women were legitimate participants in feuds, both as actors and as victims. Women could also play the more stereotypical role of encouraging their male kin during family disputes. Ana García, a widow, brought suit against Manuel del Alamo and his wife, Angela García, in 1648. Ana alleged that one day del Alamo entered her house, slapped her in the face with his open hand, called her a ‘‘pícara,’’ beat her face some more, then left and threw his cape down in the street. When he came into the street, his wife was yelling, ‘‘Hit her, hit her,’’ urging him to go back in and strike her again. A witness also said that earlier that day she heard Angela out in front of her house (which was across the street from Ana’s house) declaiming to everyone in earshot that Ana was ‘‘a great slovenly, gossipy bellaca bawd.’’∑≤ Women also frequently instigated feuds on their own. Mothers and daughters sometimes worked together in teams, as in 1624 when Pedro López Delgado accused Catalina de Torres and her daughter Mariana de Torres of saying all over Yébenes that he and his sons were ‘‘Jews, dogs, Moors, thieves, and disreputable people.’’∑≥ Similarly, Juan García Nobleja brought suit against María Hernández, wife of Eugenio Calvo, and her

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daughter María, wife of Juan Rubio Pastos, on San Pedro’s Day in 1633. Backed up by witnesses, he claimed that the mother and daughter had defamed his daughter Catalina, calling her shameless and the whore of a certain (unnamed) young man in Yébenes. Not content with verbal abuse, they also scratched her face and dragged her through the house by her hair.∑∂ In the incidents that defied the expectations of the honor code most dramatically, women in Yébenes sometimes acted to protect and defend their husbands. Alonso de Alfaro, a constable of the fiel del juzgado, made this unfortunate discovery in 1628 when he attempted to arrest Francisco Esteban Ventura for having attacked another of the fiel del juzgado’s constables who was investigating a separate case. Esteban resisted arrest and attacked Alfaro in an attempt to escape. To aid him in the a√ray, his wife rushed out of the house and bit the constable on the hand. Alfaro and the scribe accompanying him testified later that the next thing they knew, Esteban had a sword in his hand, which they believed his wife had given him. Esteban swiped at the scribe, knocking the papers from his hand. Because the constable was unarmed, Esteban managed to escape through a house and some corrals.∑∑ In a similar case from 1608, witnesses reported that when Tomás Carpio came to arrest Juan de Azeña for having slapped Francisco Rodríguez and twice called him a liar, Azeña’s wife, María Crespa, appeared and seized the vara de justicia from Carpio ‘‘with both hands and broke it,’’ signaling her contempt for the judicial authorities.∑∏ Evidence from the Good Friday Pardons further supports the idea that throughout Castile women felt a duty to defend their family members, especially their children. In Madrid in 1634 Juan de Garay came home one night and asked his son Francisco to come out with him. The boy refused because it was late, and Garay threw a shoe at him. Phelipa de la Peña, Garay’s wife and the boy’s mother, defended Francisco. In her original deposition, Peña claimed that her husband beat her severely in the head, but later when she issued a private pardon, she claimed that he had only pushed her once, and that she fell and hit her head. Either way, Peña died from the wounds she received while protecting her son from her husband.∑π In a similar case from a village in Galicia called Feliguesia de San Pedro de Cumeyro, Alonso de Carballal accused his stepfather, Amaro Suiro, of beating him one day in 1621 for having returned from

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working in a field too early. Dominga Marquera, Carballal’s mother, tried to calm her husband down, and he responded by beating her to death.∑∫ Women risked their lives to protect others who were close to them. In Madrid in 1627, María de Medrano told the authorities that she received her ultimately fatal wound while eating at her house with her husband and Paula, a neighbor woman. Paula’s husband, Melchor Aguilera, came into their house and attacked his wife with a sword; he struck Medrano on the head by accident when she tried to come between Aguilera and his wife to stop the attack.∑Ω Josefa Fernández was a servant who gave her life trying to help her mistress, Francisca de Salcedo, in Vitoria in 1640. Salcedo explained that her husband, Pedro Alegria, had beaten her one night, so she and Fernández went to seek the alcalde’s help at his house, begging him ‘‘for the love of God to take them in for the night.’’ Alegria followed them there and attacked them at the alcalde’s door. The two women fled to a nearby tavern, but the tavern keeper told them that ‘‘it did not seem good that married women should be walking around outside their house at such an hour’’ and persuaded them to return to their house. When Alegria himself returned later that night, he came in with his sword drawn and stabbed Fernández in the belly. She died four or five days later.∏≠ Like men, women acted to defend the safety, interests, and reputation of their family members and others close to them. Whether they acted alone, as part of an all-female group, or as part of an entire family e√ort in a feudlike dispute with another family, women were not passive and did not leave their male kin solely responsible for the slander, a√ront, and assault necessary in their understanding of reputation and violent conflict. Yet women’s reputations were not entirely the same as men’s. Two substantial di√erences between women’s and men’s reputations emerge from the criminal records. The first was an evident lack of a sense of oficio as part of the female reputation. Of course, most public o≈ces and professions were restricted to men, but we should assume that, given the familyoriented organization of production in artisan households, women contributed an enormous amount to the accomplishments of the shoemakers, tailors, and tanners of Yébenes. There is no evidence from the criminal records, however, of women taking pride in the performance of their duties, not even housewifery.∏∞ The only glimmer of pride in craftswoman-

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ship comes from two Good Friday Pardons that feature servant women working in aristocratic kitchens. In 1623 two servant women argued over what to cook in Vergara, in Guipúzcoa, leading to the death of Ana Aguinaga after María Aguinas knocked her to the ground and then accidentally (Aguinas claimed) smothered her while covering her mouth to keep her from crying out.∏≤ And in Madrid in 1640, Juana Francisca killed Margarita Mendoza with a hammer after the two argued because Francisca had given some lettuce to a pet monkey.∏≥ Even these two examples strain the definition of oficio. The servants may have been acting not out of a sense of duty they felt as servants (to cook the proper thing, to not waste food on a monkey) but rather out of jealousies for their mistresses’ attention in the quasifamilial setting that servants found themselves in, or perhaps even out of personal animosity. The point is that for women, criminal records do not provide evidence of anything like the identification with their trades and social positions that men demonstrated in their violent confrontations. Noblewomen and their servants do not figure as prominently in the criminal records either. While the Good Friday Pardons contain many hidalgos, soldiers, and even noblemen, there is almost nothing on gentlewomen or women from wealthy urban families. Perhaps enclosure was more of a reality for elite women than it was for peasants and artisans, and perhaps the emphasis that Christian moralists put on sexual purity as the single defining virtue for women was more true at this level of society. This would help explain the failure of these women to appear in criminal records. It is also possible that looking at other records in addition to criminal archives could reveal more about women’s sense of social status, oficio, or housewifery. Church records, dealing as they do with ecclesiastical crime centering on sex and the family, might reveal more about this topic. The second main di√erence between female and male reputation was the absence of the aggressive, competitive play and burlas that was such an important part of male sociability. The criminal records are clear: such play had no place in women’s lives. Women did not gamble, play competitive games, drink often in taverns, or congregate in plazas and churchyards. These were strictly male activities that occurred in largely all-male places. If groups of women engaged in teasing burlas with each other, it did not lead to aggression, violence, and criminal investigations. The only cases from the criminal records of burlas that involve women also involve

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men, and they tend to have an overtly sexual character. In an example from Yébenes in 1622, discussed in chapter 2, the slave Antón was ‘‘playing with’’ María del Prado, trying to remove her apron while del Prado tried to knock o√ his hat. When del Prado’s sixteen-year-old son Marcos López discovered them, he quickly put an end to the suggestive game by striking Antón with a rock.∏∂ And in another example discussed in a previous chapter, a group of teenage boys in Yébenes in 1612 found themselves under criminal investigation after they pursued (and then pinched) a group of women in their early twenties who were fetching water at dusk.∏∑ Elsewhere in Castile burlas involving women followed the same pattern. In Quete in 1640, in a case examined in the previous chapter, a group of young men went through the streets singing and playing the guitar one night, and some of them ended up outside the house of Ana de Alcoçer, a young single woman who had spoken with some of them on occasion. Witnesses reported that Ana’s brother, Benito Alcoçer, rushed out of the house with a sword to confront the boisterous young men, demonstrating that he did not take lightly this kind of attention directed toward his sister.∏∏ When aimed toward women, the competitive aggression of Castilian men seems to have taken a sexual overtone. Here the Christian moralists’ pronouncements aligned with practice in Castile. In Obligations of All the Estates, Juan de Soto cautioned unmarried girls, enclosed inside their houses though they may be, not even to speak with their fathers about gambling, cards, plays, and the like.∏π Antonio de Guevara brought up the subject of girls who mimic courtship with lewd words and suggest phony proposals and then defend their own behavior as merely burlas to pass the time. He warned them that play leads to reality, and that those who mock will end up mocked themselves.∏∫ In Salutary Teaching on the Estate of Matrimony (Saludable instrucion del estado de matrimonio, 1566), Vicente Mexia even discouraged teasing in public between loving husbands and wives, who should restrict themselves to modest expressions of a√ection and friendly conversation.∏Ω As if to emphasize the sexual, and therefore forbidden, nature that burlas held for women, Juan Luis Vives included the mocking of one’s peers in his cautionary list of things a girl would su√er should she lose her virginity: ‘‘Think now what burlas, what ridicule, what stories the other virgins will tell of you, they who used to compete with you in virtue. What will you do to turn aside the swords of your friends?’’π≠ Although women’s

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reputations rested on more than just sex, teasing play was one area where the highly sexual content of the rhetoric of honor mirrored reality. There is plenty of evidence in the criminal records of a di√erent kind of sociability for women. Their social world seems to have revolved around houses—their own and those of their friends and family—just as men gravitated toward taverns, plazas, and other open spaces.π∞ The testimony of countless witnesses begins by describing a scene in which a group of women were gathered together, speaking, eating, and sometimes working in a house belonging to one of them. Doorways, patios, and the street right outside their houses also seem to have been acceptable spaces for women. Along with churches, fountains and wells—that is, places where women needed to go to fetch water—seem to have been the only public places where women felt comfortable. In 1629, María Gómez la Montera was alleged to have called María Fernández a whore at a fountain, in the presence of many other women, and the young women who were pinched by the boys in 1612 were also going to fetch water.π≤ And, of course, the episode that opened this chapter, in which Ana Díaz and María Fernández fought over seats, took place in a church during Mass.π≥ Even on routine domestic excursions, men often escorted women through the streets. One night in Madrid in 1642, Juan de Laque, a coachman, accompanied two young women to the Fuente del Cura to draw water. Laque tried to warn o√ two men who approached and began speaking to the girls. When they refused to withdraw, Laque drew his sword and killed one of them.π∂ For a woman to walk the streets alone invited trouble. For example, in Madrid in 1636, Ana de Frías, a serving woman, came out of her master’s house carrying a copper pitcher. Diego Lozano accosted her and told her to give him some of what she was carrying, according to a friend of his, and Frías responded that the wine was for her master and Lozano could not have any. Lozano responded by slapping the girl and seizing the pitcher. (Surprisingly, Frías’s response was to seize Lozano’s hat and run back into the house. Lozano ended up killing Frías’s master, Don Carlos Bermejo, as well as a constable who came to investigate the homicide.)π∑ There seem to have been only two circumstances in the criminal records in which women routinely left the house alone for long periods of time. Excursions to work or collect resources in rural areas were the first. Diego Martínez de Márquez accused two women from his

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village of Vilbustre, near Soria, of having killed his wife when the women were out searching for firewood in 1644.π∏ In this case, the women went out together in a group, just as they did in Yébenes to go fetch water. The second circumstance involved women who spent their days selling goods from their shops or market stalls in the cities of Castile, and the Good Friday Pardons are full of such examples. In Toledo in 1628, Juan de la Cruz challenged Domingo Díaz to a duel and eventually killed him at a game of bowls after he had warned Díaz not to visit Ana López, a hosier, at her stall.ππ Even at her stall, a place where López could expect to be alone and autonomous, men were watching her, and de la Cruz made sure to notice who came to visit and speak with her. Indeed, even at their shops women seem to have been surrounded by networks of vigilant men. The oyster-selling woman in Seville who got into a dispute with two men over her prices was quickly supported by her friends, the two young coopers, and in the same city the woman counting sardines who was a√ronted by the sailor from Cádiz saw her husband rush to her defense.π∫ Despite the watchful eyes of men, non-elite women in Yébenes and elsewhere in Castile were not subject to total enclosure. Aspects of their lives constantly pulled them out of the home and connected them with the rest of their community. Networks of credit and debt connected women— independently from their husbands, it seems—to others through bonds of economic and social obligation. And the need to defend their families and attack their opponents drew women out into the street, with stones in their hands and vitriol in their mouths. Thus, while denied free access to the public spaces of the community and disengaged from the competitive aggression of male sociability, women nevertheless were members of the community at large. The boundary between the public and private spheres was pierced by the innumerable links that women maintained with others in their community, and women’s honor rested on how well they managed these links as much as it rested on their chastity. Castilian women’s engagement with the economic, social, and legal contests of their community also contradicts the idea that female honor was dependant on an inward-looking self-denial (as Calderón’s Mencía put it), empty of positive values, and relied solely on avoiding any taint of sexual impurity. Like men, women’s reputations reflected their performance in a number of social roles in a variety of situations.

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women and the rhetoric of honor Women were similar to men in another important way, too: they defended themselves and their reputations, using the rhetoric of honor to do so. Women such as María Crespa, who broke a constable’s vara de justicia, turned the traditional understanding of the honor code on its head. Instead of being protected and avenged by her husband, Crespa rescued him. The examples above have shown some of the things women could do, beginning with María Fernández’s assault on Ana Díaz with a board during Mass. For women to behave assertively in the defense of their reputations and interests, however, goes against the classic interpretation of the honor code. ‘‘A woman who takes to physical violence or attempts to usurp the male prerogative of authority . . . forfeits her shame,’’ argued Julian Pitt-Rivers in his classic essay, ‘‘Honour and Social Status.’’πΩ The anthropologists and historians who have written on feuding and the vendetta also subscribe to this view when they claim that the responsibility to protect and avenge the family and its honor rested almost entirely on the male members of feuding societies.∫≠ But we have already seen that this was not the case for women in early modern Castile, and that women also assumed the responsibility for protecting and defending their own reputations. The door burning, slandering, and ‘‘rescuing’’ of husbands and goods from the authorities found in Yébenes had counterparts outside Castile as well.∫∞ Moreover, the criminal archives show that women’s behavior in disputes closely mirrored that of men. Like men, women employed the rhetoric of honor, including the rituals of the duel. Intentional a√ronts, giving the lie, and challenges to fight were as much a part of women’s repertoire during conflict as men’s, used to elevate the initial dispute into a serious matter involving the character of the participants. Also like men, women possessed the freedom to choose how to respond to a√ronts. One option available to women was to allow men to protect and avenge them, just as the traditional understanding of honor would have it. The previous chapter demonstrated that men felt an obligation to defend members of their family from attack and a√ront. They were particularly concerned with protecting their female kin from sexual a√ront. Adding to those examples, in 1639 in Loja, Alonso Calvo reported that he and his brother-in-law Francisco Salinas ate dinner together at the house of another man, then each walked back to his own house afterward. As Salinas

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was walking home, some women whom he did not know approached him and told him that Calvo had spoken to a female relative of his, and that ‘‘they knew that he had an a√air with her.’’ Salinas’s response to this information was to seek out Calvo, ask him to come down to the river, and lead him behind a mill where no one could see them. Salinas confronted Calvo with what he had heard, and Calvo denied it, but Salinas drew his sword and attacked Calvo regardless. Calvo wounded Salinas, and they then made peace, but Salinas died a few days later.∫≤ Sexual a√ront was not the only case in which men felt they should avenge their wives. Again, another example can be added to those from the previous chapter. According to the testimony of several witnesses, in Carabanchel de Arriba in 1641, Ana de Urosa took a box of lancets from Juan de Vallegas, a barber, then had an angry argument with him over returning it. Urosa went home, told her husband, Alonso Montero, about the fight, and asked him to kill Vallegas. Montero complied, apparently judging homicide to be an appropriate response to the barber’s abuse.∫≥ Like men, women too were concerned with a√ront, truth, and reputation in their disputes and therefore employed the rhetoric of honor. For example, in a case cited above, Juana Palaçios told María de Maragon that if she denied eating with Palaçios’s husband ‘‘then she lies like a proven whore’’—language very similar to the a√ronts that writers of dueling manuals imagined would lead to duels between gentlemen at court. Women also used the Castilian words for honor, honor and honra, interchangeably with other words such as reputación (reputation) and fama (good repute). While the insults they used normally focused on sexual purity, they nevertheless used them to address a variety of aspects of honor. Even the language of criminal suits acknowledged the reputation of women using the same terms as those used to describe male reputation. For example, Pedro Garoz brought suit against María Fernández in Yébenes in 1620 for having entered the house of his daughter and insulted her with ‘‘very bad, dishonoring words against her good reputation, and trying to put hands on her,’’ and knocking her bonnet o√, all of which caused ‘‘great scandal and gossiping’’ in Yébenes. Garoz added that Fernández should be punished for doing so, since his daughter was ‘‘an honest woman, honorable and modest, a good Christian, upright, of good repute and morals.’’∫∂ With the exception of ‘‘modest’’ (‘‘recogida’’), this language was identical to that used in defense of a man’s character (and perhaps we need not exclude modesty:

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in The Perfect Gentleman, Antonio López de Vega advised noblemen to have ‘‘modestia’’ and ‘‘verguença’’—modesty and shame—in their dealings with others).∫∑ Women too, not just their male protectors, used this language to describe themselves and their reputations. When Josepha Ibáñez brought suit against María de Urueña for having a√ronted and attacked her, she described herself and her husband as ‘‘honorable people, of good morals and good name.’’∫∏ Assertions like these of a wide-ranging honor consisting of positive qualities di√ered remarkably from the claim made by Antonio de Guevara, and by twentieth-century anthropologists, that women might display only one quality in their public personas: shame, a negative quality concerned only with the absence of sexual misbehavior. Women, like men, delivered intentional a√ronts against others and assaulted them. In 1609, María González, a servant at an inn, brought a criminal complaint against Catalina Gómez, the wife of another innkeeper, for having ‘‘taken a truncheon and beaten her with it, calling her a proven whore and saying that she was a drunken slut who lived in whoredom, all in such a way that she treated her very badly.’’∫π In 1627 Lorenzo García accused María López, a widow, of having defamed and assaulted his wife, María García. ‘‘In order to destroy her good honor, name, and repute,’’ he alleged, she publicly ‘‘called my wife an immoral woman who is amancebada’’ with another man. López denied having said it and countered that María García had attacked her because she spilled some water on García’s skirt.∫∫ These examples show how women took it upon themselves to attack other women for sexual misconduct, and to defend their own sexual reputations, using the terms whore and amancebada.∫Ω Sex was not the only issue that led to disputes between women—note how sexual slander against María López may have resulted from water falling onto a skirt. And in 1611 Ana Rodríguez called María Gómez a ‘‘bellaca thief ’’ for having tampered with a wall of her house in order to steal from her. Rodríguez also slapped Gómez twice and threw a rock at her.Ω≠ Women also a√ronted men. In 1613 Lic. Pedro de Ruedas, a priest in Yébenes, brought suit against María López for shouting out that he was ‘‘a tremendous troublemaker and a wicked man, and that he had stolen two hundred goats and their kids,’’ and also that ‘‘his soul would walk in the worst levels of hell.’’ She added that Juan Moreno and Francisco Ruiz Loçano had acquired their estates fraudulently. When told to be quiet, she said she would not until the allegations had been proven.Ω∞ In 1650,

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Marcos Sevillano brought suit against Catalina Marín and her husband, Francisco García, a bricklayer, for repeatedly coming through the paddock next to his house and mistreating his livestock, and also because Marín had called him ‘‘a gossip and a defamer of honorable women and men.’’Ω≤ In these examples López and Marín were accused of using insults and a√ronts, including physical actions such as trespassing, to defend their economic interests and assert themselves against men. Notice also how these women picked out two special areas in which men were especially vulnerable to defamation: purity of blood and cuckoldry. Some women took the step from slander to physical violence, as Ana Díaz and María Fernández did in the opening example of this chapter. Their fight over seats in the church was a fight over precedence, and therefore honor, similar to men fighting in the street over who would pass first. Like men, these two women employed rituals of the duel to wage their battle. Women sometimes chose physical violence even when confronting men. In 1611 Juan Estabaniote, a ‘‘foreigner’’ who was unable to speak Castilian (he may have simply been from a region of Spain where Castilian was not spoken), was stabbed and wounded while staying in the Hospital de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, a hostel for poor travelers in Yébenes. Juana de Salaçar, another guest at the hostel whose husband had left her, was accused of stabbing him in the back after he slapped her in the face. Salaçar denied having done so, claiming that the confrontation was actually between Estabaniote and the wife of the warden of the hostel. Regardless of who was telling the truth, it seems that a woman was responsible for the violence against this man.Ω≥ Such aggression was rare, however, and perhaps the most striking di√erence between the behavior of women and men in violent confrontation was the use of weapons. Men seemed to have swords and knives at their disposal at all times, while women almost never made use of such weapons, Estabaniote’s wound notwithstanding. Swords were an exclusively male accoutrement, but as they went about their daily work women must have found it necessary to use, handle, and carry knives. Nevertheless, women were accused of wielding these dangerous weapons much less frequently than men, even after taking into account the tendency of men to appear in criminal investigations more often than women for all types of behavior. Salaçar’s story is one of only two cases in the sample examined here of a woman using a sword, dagger, or knife against a man. The other example

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was of a woman protecting herself against an attack that occurred while she was alone in her house at night— circumstances so extreme as to support the conclusion that women did not ordinarily use knives and swords. As we saw in chapter 2, in 1624 María Prieta, at home while her husband was away, tried to ward o√ an invader with her husband’s sword, and then later bit him.Ω∂ She probably grabbed the sword for its symbolism as much as its actual deadly threat: she had a husband who could wield this sword in earnest when he returned. Like biting, picking up a sword was an action that a woman would take only in desperation. Although women rarely posed a physical threat to men, their verbal a√ronts were powerful enough to have real impact during disputes, as demonstrated in the above examples by men’s reactions to women’s insults. When María López called Pedro de Ruedas a bellaco and accused him of stealing goats, one might think that a priest and the holder of a university degree would view her outburst dismissively. Instead, he brought a criminal complaint against her, forcing her to retract her statements and swear under oath that ‘‘he is a very good Christian and of good name and repute, and that she had not said the words about him’’ that were alleged. Fifteen days after first complaining about her, when she had already been seized and imprisoned in Toledo, Ruedas repeated his complaint, claiming that López had spoken ‘‘with the intention of insulting and a√ronting’’ him.Ω∑ Ruedas prosecuted his case almost to the point of a formal trial, going so far as having a questionnaire drawn up to present to witnesses during such a trial, before finally granting López a private pardon. Similarly, when Marcos Sevillano brought suit against Catalina Marín for calling him an informer and a defamer, he omitted to mention that her words came in the middle of an argument. Marín had complained that Sevillano’s sheep had been damaging her property. Witnesses reported that Sevillano had responded by threatening that ‘‘he would throw her out of the town for her malicious talk.’’ It was then that Marín insulted Sevillano, and he responded by saying, ‘‘Shut up and go out searching in the roads for your husband.’’Ω∏ Sevillano felt that Marín’s a√ront was serious enough for him to respond with an insult and a command in addition to a criminal complaint. Women did not stop at simple outbursts of insult and violence; they employed the full range of dueling rituals during disputes. Quiteria Gómez, a widow and a servant at an inn, was discussing a possible visit to the

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nearby village of Marjaliza, her original home, one day in 1624. According to a constable who happened to be there with them, Alonso Ramírez, a patron at the inn, proclaimed that Gómez ‘‘only went to Marjaliza to have her fill of fornication.’’ Gómez replied by calling Ramírez a cuckold and saying that he lied, thereby delivering an intentional a√ront to his face and giving him the lie, two important elements of the duel. Ramírez responded according to the patterns of the duel as well. He assaulted Gómez, bloodying her nose and mouth, carrying on until the constable threatened to arrest him unless he stopped. Gómez later opened a criminal complaint against Ramírez.Ωπ Similarly, María Rodríguez entered the house of Catalina Cid one day in 1628 and beat her about the head with a weapon until onlookers stopped her. When the authorities investigated the case, Rodríguez justified her assault by claiming that she had heard that Cid had said ‘‘very wicked words . . . touching on her honor.’’Ω∫ Here she justified her physical assault with an explicit reference to her honor and to a perceived a√ront, the basic structure of the duel. And in 1624 Mariana, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of Catalina de Torres, provoked an attack through an escalating exchange of a√ronts. According to her statement to the justicia, who began an ex oficio investigation, a young boy had called Mariana a whore, and Mariana went to the boy’s mother, Marina García, complaining that ‘‘she should raise her son properly, since he had called her a whore.’’ García whipped her son, but later in the day Francisco López Delgado, a young man standing outside Mariana’s house, remarked that ‘‘if the boy said it, at least he did not lie.’’ Mariana retorted that he was a ‘‘filthy man’’ for saying that, and López Delgado picked up a rock to throw at her. After his brother stopped him from throwing it, Delgado entered Mariana’s house and gave her a blow on the face. It turned out that López Delgado had paid the boy a small coin to call Mariana a whore.ΩΩ To desmentir, or give the lie to one’s opponent, was a crucial component of the duel that women like Quiteria Gómez employed to their advantage. Men recognized the power of women and their words by giving women the lie in turn. In an example first encountered in chapter 2, Ana Fernández, a widow, brought suit against Juan Bermejo for having walked through the Calle Real, where she lived, and calling out that she was ‘‘a filthy, wicked bellaca and that she lied,’’ and also that she was a drunkard and a false witness, among other insults. In a countersuit,

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Bermejo explained that his comments were in response to her insults toward him, such as calling him a ‘‘rich, miserly man’’ who ‘‘devoured the poor.’’∞≠≠ In another example from chapter 2, in 1650 Juan de Balboa gave Ana García the lie, threw something at her, and called her a drunkard and shameless, all because she had disparaged the quality of some clothes from Granada that Balboa’s friend Eugenio García was trying to sell. When Ana’s husband filed a suit against Balboa for his treatment of her, Balboa explained that he meant to say that it was Martín Ximénez who lied when he told Ana that the wares were of poor quality.∞≠∞ Here, when faced with a criminal investigation, a man in Yébenes found it safer to say that he had given the lie to a man than to admit having done so to a woman. Evidence from the Good Friday Pardons shows that the concept of women using the rituals of the duel was not unique to Yébenes. We have seen in a previous example that in Madrid in 1636 Diego Lozano slapped Ana de Frías, a servant, for not handing over to him a jar she was carrying for her master, then he seized the jar. In response to this a√ront and theft, Frías grabbed Lozano’s hat and ran back into her master’s house. The hat was an important symbol of the self, and indeed when Frías’s master Don Carlos Bermejo went out to investigate, Lozano and two friends stabbed and killed him with their swords.∞≠≤ Women were also objects of the rituals of the duel. In 1638 in Madrid, María Pardo was in a tavern one night when Joseph Hernández, a gypsy, came in. She greeted him by asking what he was doing there. Hernández responded with an insult, and Pardo told him that ‘‘he lies like a bastard.’’ Hernández then asked Pardo to come out into the street to speak with him, and when she did, he gave her a fatal stab wound in the belly.∞≠≥ Here, in response to being given the lie, Hernández challenged her to leave the area and confront him in another place, just as he would challenge another man to a duel. Men also used the formal language of the duel to describe their interactions with women. During an ex oficio investigation at Yébenes in 1634, Ana López Terzera testified that Juan Guerrero and Maestro Juan Párrago, a clergyman, came to her house one night and told her that Guerrero wanted ‘‘an honorable satisfaction’’ from her for having insulted his wife. Guerrero then called her and her daughter shameless, hit her on the head with a rod, and drew his sword menacingly, telling her to ‘‘watch what you say.’’∞≠∂ Again, this type of language is usually thought to have

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taken place only between men, and its use against a woman shows a surprising respect for the power and e≈cacy of women’s involvement in disputes over reputation. Of course, this kind of respect from men was one that many women could do without. While women did verbally abuse men and sometimes physically assault them, women’s size and lack of weaponry ensured that they ended up worse o√ in most of the violent clashes that took place between men and women. For example, women asserted their right to maintain their own credit and debt relationships with men only at some risk. In 1615, Beatriz de las Casas, a fifty-year-old widow, claimed that when she approached Juan Nieto, a cartwright, for some money he owed her, Nieto told her ‘‘he did not want to pay,’’ and struck her and knocked her to the ground.∞≠∑ Similarly, in 1609 Catalina Ruiz, another widow, brought suit against Juan de Sevilla de Bernaldo. Ruiz had gone to Sevilla’s house to collect a debt from his wife, and Sevilla assaulted Ruiz on the head, bruising her and causing her jaw to swell.∞≠∏ Women’s vulnerability to physical violence at the hands of men perhaps helps explain why, despite the option of using the rituals of the duel to protect their interests, women often turned to their husbands to protect them and avenge affronts and assault. Like men, women also had the option of complaining to the justicia. In Yébenes in 1634, Alonso Bravo Pinedas, a scribe, and the constable Jacinto Pérez found themselves a√ronted, pushed, threatened with a sword, and challenged to a duel by Estevan Ruiz and his son-in-law while trying to execute an order from an alcalde against Ruiz. The alcalde had commanded Ruiz to pay a certain quantity of maravedís that he owed to Ysabel Guerra and Anna her daughter. This order was probably a response to a complaint from the women after their own entreaties to Ruiz were unsuccessful.∞≠π Lastly, just as men were not always compelled to resort to violence in order to avenge slights to their wives’ sexual reputations, neither were women. In the example above, Ana García chose to respond to Balboa’s provocation by opening a criminal complaint. In this case her husband brought the complaint to the alcalde, as the law demanded. According to the strict interpretation of criminal law, widows were the only women who were eligible to open suits against those who had committed a crime against them. Husbands were supposed to act on behalf of married women and fathers on behalf of those still unmarried, a legal rule that

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explains why some men in Yébenes did begin criminal prosecutions against those who a√ronted their wives. However, in Yébenes women had a wide latitude for legal action that was not sanctioned by any written law. In an example mentioned in chapter 3 we observed Josepha Ibáñez bringing suit against María de Urueña and her husband, Martín Ximénez, for their insults, threats, and assault against her, appearing before the alcalde and waging the criminal case herself.∞≠∫ We have also seen that women were behind many of the cases that began de oficio. Once an investigation began, women also exerted a powerful influence over its course through their roles as witnesses. Witnesses in general were not shy about giving their opinions on the guilt and character of the people involved in a violent confrontation under investigation, and women such as María Gómez and María López la Cuerba were no exception. In the example above from Seville in 1647, when Juan de Prado killed the sailor Juan de la Peña after he called Prado’s wife, Francisca de Palacios, a ‘‘shameless mulata Morisca bitch,’’ two widows who had seen the episode gave their depositions. María de los Ángeles declared that ‘‘Francisca de Palacios is the one who has the guilt for the quarrel occurring, and if it had not been for her there would have been no fight, nor would anything else have happened.’’ María Gómez agreed that it was Palacios’s fault and also o√ered her commentary on the events, saying that Prado attacked Peña because he ‘‘had dishonored his wife,’’ and that Prado ‘‘struck him out of love for his wife.’’∞≠Ω It was common for female witnesses to remark on the character of men and women involved in criminal cases, and investigating authorities seem to have treated the testimony of women the same as that of men and to have sought out women as witnesses without qualms. Men recognized the power of women as witnesses. In Yébenes in 1615, Juan de Casteñeda accused the miller Pedro de Losa of entering his house one night and pressing a dagger against the chest of his wife, María de Mondragón. Mondragón had given a deposition in a case that was pending against Losa’s wife, and as Losa threatened her with his dagger he said, ‘‘Bellaca, why did you testify against my wife?’’ Bystanders outside intervened to save Mondragón from Losa’s intimidation.∞∞≠ Accusations of giving false testimony provide perhaps the most convincing evidence for the importance of women in the legal system. In Yébenes in 1628

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Catalina Fernández brought a criminal complaint against Lucía Fernández del Pozo for having said publicly that Fernández had been a false witness in a case between Fernández del Pozo and Bartolomé Cid. Other witnesses reported that Fernández del Pozo had also called her ‘‘an infamous bellaca’’ and other slanders, but the line of questioning directed at Fernández del Pozo by the fiel del juzgado’s lieutenants in the Toledo prison make it clear that her accusation of bearing false witness was the slander they found most serious. Fernández weighed in with her own counterassessment of Fernández del Pozo’s character, stating that she ‘‘has many quarrels with other people since she normally treats them poorly in word and in deed.’’∞∞∞ If women had not been such influential brokers of reputation in their communities, then no one would have wanted to threaten or prosecute females such as María de Mondragón or Lucía Fernández del Pozo. There were other ways for women to influence the outcome of criminal cases as well. The most important was for a woman to grant a private pardon to someone who had committed a crime against her or her family. As with all legal mechanisms, there was an element of the routine; women, like men, were more or less expected to withdraw from the prosecution of serious cases so that their opponents would not su√er corporal punishment. But those issuing private pardons had the right to withhold their forgiveness until the o√ending party made some concessions—usually a monetary payment, especially if a husband had been slain, leaving the widow and children in need of support. As we first saw in chapter 3, the widow Catalina Gómez first prosecuted Sebastián López de San Marcos in Yébenes in 1623 for having assaulted her daughter Ana. Later she issued a private pardon on the condition that López de San Marcos pay all the costs of the criminal suit.∞∞≤ Sources from outside Yébenes show that homicide often merited substantial monetary recompense, as when Isabel García pardoned her brother-in-law Juan Crespo for having killed her husband, Fernando Gorgoxo, in the village of Toral de los Guzmanes in 1650. In return for her pardon, García received six hundred reales from Crespo to support herself and her children.∞∞≥ Private pardons gave women powerful leverage to exact concessions from those who had damaged their honor, interests, and lives. By taking these actions, women claimed a legal status that did not

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exist, except for widows, in any Castilian law code. This observation points to a larger theme running through the criminal records: the gap between how elite commentators wanted women to behave and how non-elite women actually did behave.∞∞∂ In the minds of elite writers such as Calderón or Astete, honor was a rigid code of behavior designed to safeguard the sexual chastity of women, a prescription for enforcing morality and social order. In the hands and tongues of the women of Yébenes, however, honor was a rhetorical tool to be picked up and used—or ignored—to pursue their interests and claim active roles in village life. Legal tactics such as accusations and private pardons, epithets such as whore and thief, violent behavior such as hitting another woman on the face with a plank or employing the language and rituals of the duel—all of these things were options for the women of Castille as they conducted their a√airs as debtors, creditors, and participants in family feuds, and as they carried out other similar activities necessary for normal village life. One final example can help demonstrate the malleability of the rhetoric of honor in the mouths of Castilian women. One night in 1629 Ana Sánchez, wife of Francisco Abad, found Francisco de la Cruz in her room trying to steal something. She told him, ‘‘Why do you want to defame me? Go with God from my house; is not the dishonor you have given me enough?’’∞∞∑ Two days later, when the alcalde of Yébenes learned of the a√air and began an investigation, Sánchez repeated the story. We cannot know whether she truly felt a threat of rape when she discovered de la Cruz, or whether she felt that her reputation would be stained if neighbors discovered that he had spent time alone with her in her house, but certainly evoking these possibilities helped her deal with de la Cruz’s incursion: after she said those words, he fled. Here Sánchez turned the received notion of honor upside down. According to Golden Age moralists and playwrights, the mere suspicion of sexual impropriety should have brought shame to Sánchez. Instead, she was able to manipulate this assumption and use it as a weapon for chasing de la Cruz out of her house. Perhaps de la Cruz was there only to steal, but sexual misconduct and a threat to a woman’s honor were more serious crimes than theft, and Sánchez increased the stakes of de la Cruz’s incursion by mentioning her dishonor. In Sánchez’s hands, honor was a rhetorical tool that could be used to pursue her own goals, and the possibility of sexual dishonor was a threat to her opponent, not to her.

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conclusion If we relied on honor plays, confessor’s manuals, and modern anthropologists, Ana Sánchez’s behavior would be hard to understand. These sources present a view of honor as an unyielding structure. If a woman were to stray from sexual chastity, she would be shamed. Trying to defend her reputation herself would also bring dishonor, since it was a man’s duty to protect or avenge any threat to her sexual reputation. But criminal records show that the rhetoric of honor was more fluid than that. Ana Sánchez invoked sexual dishonor to drive Francisco de la Cruz from her house, Quiteria Gómez gave the lie to an insulting male patron in the inn where she worked, Catalina and Mariana de Torres carried out a feud against Pedro López Delgado, and Catalina Maestra assaulted Isabel López over some unpaid debts. In their use of the rhetoric of honor to assert themselves and articulate claims to respect from their neighbors, all of these women went far beyond the traditional boundaries of sexuality, shame, and male protection. After viewing their behavior, we need to discard our idea of honor as an inflexible code and be suspicious of elite writings that portrayed it that way. This leads to a larger point. Gender was an important part of one’s public identity and behavior, but it was only one part, along with social status, economic position, and membership in a family. Gender may have been one of the most important constituents of identity in Golden Age Spain, but the di√erence between gender and other sources of the self, such as belonging to a particular family or economic status, was one of degree, not kind. It is true that women had a special vulnerability to accusations of sexual misconduct, and that the language of female honor and reputation was heavily laden with sexual terms, but frequently the language of sexual humiliation was used as an expedient when the real issue driving a confrontation was something else entirely, such as an unpaid debt or lawsuit between two families. Sex does not deserve the unique place that the traditional understanding of the honor code accords it. As with men, reputation for women was a composite of positive qualities to be defended. It was more than just shame, where a woman’s good reputation could be defined as a hollowness at the core of her self, defined not by the possession of any positive characteristics but only by an emptiness of negative traits. Also as with men, women’s reputations were composed of a seemingly unrelated array of roles and symbols to be asserted

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and defended: credit relations; legal rights; family position; symbolic areas such as the house, the doorway, and the patio; and symbolic items such as bonnets and aprons. For women, the rhetoric of honor was an instrument of their own devising, not a structure that kept them trapped in enclosure and submission. Women’s reputations were largely their own responsibility, and they generally had the understanding, wherewithal, and resources necessary to shoulder that burden. Yet if everything just stated here were true, it seems that there would be no place for shame—vergüenza—in this scheme of things, despite the stress that the moralists put on shame as the most important safeguard of a woman’s honor. Probing deeper, however, reveals that there was a role for shame, both for women and for men. In the previous chapter we found that the rhetoric of honor worked to mask or undo humiliation, providing a counterself to one’s neighbors after being depicted by an opponent as someone not able or willing to live up to the ideals of one’s position. Vergüenza was a preemptive move to avoid humiliation, to ostentatiously present oneself as adhering, willingly, to one’s proper roles. This is made clear in Vicente Mexia’s explanation of the relationship between husbands and wives in his Salutary Teaching on the Estate of Matrimony. Oddly, he begins his discussion of marriage by addressing slavery. He explains that slaves are miserable, debased people whose wills have been taken from them, and that they obey simply out of fear of the terrible punishments their masters can inflict on them if they disobey. The reference to slavery makes sense when he then compares slaves to wives. A wife performs her husband’s commands ‘‘not as a slave with fear, and because she has no choice . . . but rather in the perpetual reverence that a wife must have toward her husband, like a son to his father. Instead both sons and wives act from love, and not with the servile fear that slaves have toward their lords.’’∞∞∏ Similarly, Astete, who strongly counseled enclosure for young girls and advised that parents should closely watch their daughters, also believed that the best enclosure is one that a girl adopts willingly, so that her parents do not need to guard her: ‘‘Not only with the key with which her father or mother closed the doors or the windows should she close them, but instead the love of decency should be the key that she has to guard.’’∞∞π Having a sense of shame was a way to avoid feeling shamed through humiliation. Thus, vergüenza was what prompted women to willingly obey their

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husbands, to avoid streets and taverns, and to choose to do the right thing. This, perhaps, is what the moralists meant when they argued that the most important characteristic for women was shame. And the same was true for men, as Hugh de Celso hinted in his legal reference work, The Laws of All the Kingdoms of Castile. In the entry for ‘‘reputation’’ ( fama), he explained that ‘‘good reputation’’ was to do well and be praised for it, while ‘‘bad reputation’’ was to do ill and be criticized.∞∞∫ Along the same lines, he described ‘‘honor’’ (honra) as performing well voluntarily in one’s relations with others: ‘‘He who honors others honors himself.’’∞∞Ω Honor and good reputation were not a static set of values. Instead they came to those who did well, who acted virtuously, who performed their roles toward others satisfactorily. Most important, they freely chose to act well. Many of the elements of the rhetoric of honor were designed to humiliate one’s opponent—slander, beatings, the pulling of beards, and the pulling o√ of bonnets—and to demonstrate that one had control over one’s opponent’s behavior.∞≤≠ One could force one’s opponent to do what he or she was not doing willingly—paying o√ a debt, acting with sexual modesty, carrying out the duty of constable properly. One response to these shaming gestures and words was to answer back using the rhetoric of honor. Another strategy was to not let oneself be caught poorly performing one’s roles as wife, debtor, subordinate, artisan, or whatever. One of the examples involving Juan Camacho at the beginning of chapter 4 makes this point clear—it is what Diego Rodríguez meant when he replied to Camacho’s claim that Rodríguez owed him thirty reales: ‘‘I do not owe anything to him because if I did owe him anything, there would be no reason to ask me for it.’’∞≤∞ Performing what was expected, and being seen doing so willingly, was the most sure way for people to protect their own reputations and avoid having their neighbors deploy the rhetoric of honor to shame and cajole them into doing what they should.∞≤≤ In this context, the moralists’ advice that the appearance of chastity was more important than its reality makes sense. But of course vergüenza was not enough, because no one could possibly reconcile all the competing demands that the community placed on each member. Paying one’s debts willingly, as Diego Rodríguez claimed to do, was impossible for all but the most wealthy in the specie-starved countryside of Castile. Successfully defending one’s family at all times was also impossible, for there was always someone more violent, with

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more numerous kin and henchmen, to threaten all but the highest noblemen, with their legions of flunkies. Therefore, even the acute sense of shame that Christian moralists urged on Castilian women would never be enough to protect them. Women, like men, could go about cloaking their dependency and vulnerability with virtuous behavior, displaying a willing choice to adhere to the community’s rules. Self-control, really, is what was necessary to maintain one’s honor and reputation, and self-control is exactly what the Christian reformers wanted out of Golden Age men and women. Vergüenza in the form of self-control, then, was a positive value, and not just an absence of vice, as the moralists claimed. But like men, women would still need recourse to the rhetoric of honor to block or conceal the possibility of humiliation at the inability to live up to all of one’s public obligations. Even remaining enclosed in one’s husband’s or father’s house was impossible for all but the highest-status women, whose servants could go out and perform all the tasks outside the house. And only noblewomen with private chapels inside their houses could avoid going out to attend church.∞≤≥ The blows that Ana Díaz and María Fernández dealt to one another in the parish church of Yébenes should be seen in essentially the same light as the fights between men in the streets of the town, and even the formal duels fought between elites at court. Precedence and hierarchy, in the form of seats in the church, were at stake.∞≤∂ Another way of looking at the dispute is to see that a√ront, truth, and reputation were at issue, and the two women handled their dispute with the same seriousness and the same methods as men throughout Castile would have done to defend their honor. Seeing Castilian women in this light helps pull Spain from a Mediterranean context into a European one. Just as in the previous chapters, the striking features of the rhetoric of honor, its coexistence with the law, and men in Castile appear elsewhere in early modern Europe. Garthine Walker and Laura Gowing have found that women in early modern England had several components to their public reputations, including housewifery, credit and property management, and even participation in the low-level feuds their families waged against neighboring families, just like in Castile.∞≤∑ And historians of early modern Italy have found that for a woman to lose her reputation for sexual purity did not necessarily spell complete, permanent dishonor.∞≤∏ Just as important, historians have also found that women in England were able to defend their own reputations, using a well-defined

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repertoire of slander, violence, and recourse to law, against both women and men.∞≤π In Mexico, too, women defended their own honor through words, violence, and the courts.∞≤∫ Throughout the early modern world, then, we should view the rhetoric of honor and its components—insults, a√ront, violence, and the courts—as resources that women (at least nonelite women) could use, rather than as a trap to keep them enclosed and dominated by their husbands and fathers.∞≤Ω

chapter 6

Adultery and Violence

in lope de vega’s Punishment without Vengeance, the Duke of Ferrara learns from an anonymous letter that while he was away fighting for the pope his illegitimate adult son had an a√air with his young new wife. At first the duke hesitates, struggling with the love he feels for his son and feeling uncertain as to whether the adultery actually occurred. But he soon makes up his mind to take action, explaining in a monologue, ‘‘It is not necessary for an evil / to have been done to ruin honor / because it is enough to be spoken of ’’—that is, the rumor of infidelity is as much of a threat to honor as its actual fact.∞ Later he overhears his son and wife speaking and concludes that they have in fact committed adultery. Considering what he must now do to them, he laments to himself, Ay honor, fierce enemy! Who was the first who gave your law to the world, and ordered that it would be woman to whom you entrust your worth, and not to man? For without any blame the most honorable man can lose you, honor, a barbarous lawmaker was your inventor, not a learned man.≤

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He decides to bind and gag his wife, then trick his son into killing her by shielding her face from view, telling him this person was discovered plotting against him, and ordering him to kill the traitor. He then orders his son to be executed for killing his wife. In the duke’s words we have the conventional understanding of the honor code laid out in its entirety: a man’s honor rests wholly on the sexual purity of his wife; he must commit violence in order to avenge dishonor, even unwillingly against people he loves; and honor rests on reputation so much that rumor is just as capable of disgracing someone as fact. A vignette from another drama also involves suspicions of adultery in the Golden Age. Don Francisco Comelin falls in love with Doña Clara Musante and bribes her servant Jusepa with money and a rosary to let him into her house. Jusepa agrees to keep watch for the lovers while the master of the house, Leandro Baez de Padrilla, sleeps in another room. However, the lovers’ conversation awakens Leandro. Warned by Jusepa just in time, Don Francisco slips out unnoticed—but not without leaving his sword behind for Leandro to discover. Faced with her husband’s suspicious wrath, Doña Clara quickly explains that the sword must belong to the constable Juan Ximénez, who had visited the house earlier that day on o≈cial business. The next morning, in order to make the story plausible, Don Francisco and Jusepa go to persuade Ximénez to help them cover up their misdeeds. They ask the constable to go to Leandro’s house, ask if he has found Ximénez’s sword, and explain that during the previous day while carrying out some routine duties he, Ximénez, left the sword behind. To prove that the sword was his, Ximénez would show Leandro his dagger, the hilt of which matches that of the sword. Of course, the constable would be carrying Don Francisco’s dagger. Don Francisco pleads with Ximénez, explaining that the a√air ‘‘involved his reputation and the life of a distinguished lady,’’ and the constable agrees to carry out their plan. The trick works, but eventually Leandro discovers the deception and stabs his wife to death. This plot incorporates several familiar elements from the Golden Age stage. For example, in Calderón’s The Physician of His Honor, Doña Mencía’s servant Jacinta leads Prince Enrique into her house after he promises her a reward. When Mencía’s husband, Don Gutierre, returns unexpectedly, Jacinta helps Enrique escape. The prince, however, leaves behind his dagger, and Gutierre finds it. Later Gutierre discovers that its hilt matches the hilt of the prince’s sword, confirming his suspi-

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cion that his wife has been disloyal to him with the prince and leading him to murder Mencía. Despite the similarity between the deaths of Doña Mencía and Doña Clara, both at their husbands’ hands, Clara’s story involves the death of an actual woman, not on stage but in the city of Cartagena in 1649, and it appears in the Good Friday Pardons.≥ Students of Spanish literature have struggled for decades with the question of just how closely the honor plays, and especially the wifemurder plays, mirrored reality. The current thinking is that—the examples juxtaposed here notwithstanding—the killing of wives suspected of adultery became a salient plot device in the seventeenth century not because they presented a mirror image of social reality but because of internal trends in the development of Spanish drama.∂ Wayward wives who deserved punishment, abusive husbands, women in arranged marriages who found themselves married to unacceptable husbands, and marital conflict that arose from circumstances outside the control of the spouses were all well-established plot devices in the Spanish theater, and wife murder was simply a useful way to unite all of these themes into one plot.∑ Even if these trends explain the origins of the wife-murder plot device, the relationship between adultery on stage and adultery in real life remains ambiguous. Judging from the Good Friday Pardons, some actual husbands clearly did murder their wives over adultery, and lovers and husbands sometimes also met their deaths during violence caused by suspicions of infidelity. Sifting through the records of the pardons and the fiel del juzgado informs us that in some ways the real behavior of early modern Castilians dealing with adultery was similar to the picture provided by the honor plays (as was the case for Don Francisco and Doña Clara), but in other ways it was quite di√erent. First, violence and adultery must be viewed in the wider context of the rhetoric of honor. Castilians used the same components of the rhetoric of honor to handle adultery as they did to handle the other tricky problems that arose from their relationships with family members and neighbors. Second, adultery existed in the broader context of family disputes. It is a commonplace among historians and anthropologists that the family was a central, perhaps the central, institution in early modern Europe and premodern societies generally. But we should not confuse this centrality with having a strong and well-defined role in society, as Thomas Kuehn has pointed out. Kuehn describes the family as a weak and unfixed institution

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in Renaissance Italy despite its centrality and despite the existence of so much rhetoric designed to bolster its strength.∏ In Castile, violence and the rhetoric of honor was one way that men and women were able to sort through problems that arose regarding the family and the proper behavior of its members. Specifically, the criminal archives reveal tensions between the birth families of Castilians and the families they married into— in other words, between in-laws. Sometimes a woman could act as a conciliator when the two families related by marriage had a dispute, mediating between her birth family and her husband and his blood relatives. At the same time, her situation as the link between two families became dangerous when the problems between the families focused directly on the woman herself, as often happened, especially when her sexual misbehavior was causing the rift between families. Scholars have made much of how Castilian culture sanctioned the right of a cuckold to kill his adulterous wife and her lover.π The evidence from contemporary elite commentary on the subject was more ambivalent, however, since while jurists a≈rmed that the law allowed revenge, Christian moralists discouraged it. The Nueva recopilación, the 1567 law code, stated that a man had the right to kill both his wife and her lover, but not just one of them.∫ Legal commentators agreed. For example, Hugh de Celso and Francisco de Pradilla Barnuevo both concurred that a cuckold held his wife and her lover in his power and could either kill or pardon them, whichever he chose.Ω Christian writers, concerned with morality rather than law, were more skeptical. Martín de Azpilcueta Navarro thought it permissible sometimes to prevent dishonor but never to avenge dishonor after it has already occurred, which means that killing one’s wife after she commits adultery would be inexcusable.∞≠ Juan de Pedraza pointed out that although ‘‘the common people believe it to be certain that if one finds his wife with another, he can kill them without guilt,’’ it is not true, for killing is a mortal sin. And besides, it is not up to private individuals to take vengeance: even if someone deserves death, the authorities must carry out the sentence.∞∞ Juan de la Cerda agreed, elaborating that although the vulgar believe that a man who lets his adulterous wife remain alive disgraces himself, it is in fact an act of true Christian nobility to pardon, for God loves mercy and hates cruelty, and the ‘‘perpetual infamy’’ in which the adulterer would live forever after would serve as su≈cient punishment.∞≤

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Not only did the moralists hesitate to endorse wife murder, but they also disapproved of the emotion that, in so many honor plays, seemed to drive the husband’s thirst for revenge: jealousy. Antonio de Guevara advised that husbands should not be too jealous or suspicious of their wives.∞≥ Too much jealousy is bad for both husbands and wives, warned Luis de la Puente, but a husband’s jealousy is worse because he has so much power to a∆ict his wife, enclosing her and showing little confidence in her, which can lead to greater evils.∞∂ Note how he even advised against enclosure, which many prescriptive writers took as the ideal for women. Cerda agreed, instructing husbands to treat their wives with ‘‘courtesy,’’ since she is not his slave but his ‘‘companion.’’ He too cautioned against keeping wives shut in at home, lest it create a desire for too much liberty. In general a husband should treat his wife well since ill treatment would only cause him to be jealous as he looks for his wife to avenge herself by staining his honor.∞∑ Juan Luis Vives called jealousy a tyranny: ‘‘From here are born the protests, rumors, hatred, continual suspicion, and many times death. This is true because we have read and heard it said, and (what is worse) each day it happens that women cruelly have their throats cut and strangled by their husbands through jealousy.’’∞∏ While Vives perhaps exaggerated when he declared that adulterous wives were murdered every day, his lament shows that despite the elite writers’ disapproval of murdering adulterous wives, the practice was not unheard of. While the word for jealousy, celos, is rarely found in the testimony of the criminal records, men’s behavior seemed to demonstrate it often. Like the opinions of the jurists and moralists, the criminal records provide ambivalent evidence as to whether Castilians sanctioned the death of adulterous wives. The Good Friday Pardons from 1600 to 1650 contain fourteen cases in which men killed their wives, plus two more in which men threatened to kill their wives but were stopped by the authorities. In all sixteen cases, even those that seemed premeditated, the men received pardons. But it is hard to know what to make of this information, since by the nature of the source all the crimes recorded therein would have been pardoned. The Cámara de Castilla left no record of the decisionmaking process that led its members to grant royal pardons to these men, but it is important to note that none of these pardons would have been possible if the victim or the victim’s family had not granted the accused a

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private pardon. Sometimes the aggrieved parties explained the reasons for their clemency in their written testimony. The brother of Doña Catalina Pareja forgave her husband for killing her in Madrid in 1647 because ‘‘it was for an honorable cause.’’∞π Lope Díaz, a servant in Madrid whose employer mortally wounded him in 1643 after discovering him having sex with his (the employer’s) wife, declined to press a complaint against his killer before he died. The scribe recorded Díaz’s explanation: ‘‘He had su≈cient reason for giving him these wounds, for this deponent had o√ended him in his honor.’’∞∫ The Christian concern for dying ‘‘a good death’’ put enormous pressure on Castilians to demonstrate forgiveness as they passed into the next world, but still the willingness of the dying and bereaved to justify, through the concern for honor, the deaths of themselves and their loved ones is remarkable.∞Ω On the other hand, no one could receive a Good Friday Pardon unless the local judicial authorities had prosecuted that person for a crime in the first place. Each one of these wife murderers, although eventually pardoned by the aggrieved, also faced a criminal investigation. In a few examples the case proceeded far enough to reach a death sentence, sometimes stipulating an especially cruel method of execution to fit the severity of the crime, as was the case with Talavera resident Lucas Gómez after he killed his wife in 1630. Had he not received a pardon, the local authorities planned to garrote him, place his body in a container with a dog and a cat that would then be thrown into a river, and cut o√ his head and display it in the location where he committed his crime. Extraordinary punishments such as these showed that the justice system treated wife murder di√erently than ordinary homicide.≤≠ Obviously, just like these egregious punishments, murdering wives was not the normal state of a√airs in Golden Age Spain. The criminal records can help explain why husbands killed their wives and how neighbors and o≈cials reacted to it, but to understand wife murder even better we should first look at less deadly and more pervasive conflict between husbands and wives, thereby placing adultery and homicide into the larger context of more common family problems.

family conflict Much of the recent research on the family in early modern Europe has emphasized its variable and fluid nature. Previous generations of histo-

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rians and sociologists have tried to understand the family by emphasizing one key aspect, such as lineage, extending through time in a vertical line; or kin, extending horizontally through a single generation; or the household as a unit of either production or consumption; or the household as a fiscal and moral unit, as conceived by the state and church as a focus for their own concerns.≤∞ Currently, historians are rejecting these attempts to view the family through a single scheme and are moving away from concentrating on the structure of the family. Some argue that families should be seen primarily as networks of social relationships. Family relationships and institutions such as parenthood or marriage have di√erent meanings depending on the culture and time in which they exist, and on the behavior of the individuals involved.≤≤ In particular, relationships between family members were linked to the system for holding and passing property down through the generations.≤≥ In most of seventeenth-century Castile, including Yébenes, custom and law sanctioned partible inheritance, usually involving equal division of the parents’ property among the sons and daughters through dowries and gifts.≤∂ This practice led to a family structure based on nuclear families occupying autonomous households, with little sense of a lineage that was attached to a certain farmstead, passed down through generations along with the family name (as was the case in the northern tier of Spain, from Galicia to Catalonia, and in much of northern Europe). Nor did the system of equal sharing of ancestral lands encourage the development of a strong horizontal network of kin present elsewhere in early modern Europe. The descriptions of family relationships in the criminal records from Yébenes support these claims. While deponents made some references to lineage and to extended families (usually in the abstract, as ‘‘relatives’’ and ‘‘kin’’—parientes and deudos), and sometimes the boundaries between nuclear families were blurred, deponents usually only referred to very close relatives, such as siblings, parents, children, and siblings-, parents-, and children-in-law. The closest relationship between families existed between in-laws, and many family problems arose from relationships between these in-laws.≤∑ The townspeople and peasants of Yébenes viewed the family as a network of relationships, with various claims and obligations that changed over time as the family structure changed owing to marriages, the death of parents, and the birth and growth of children.≤∏ The two most important foci for these relationships that emerge from the criminal records were

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property and women. A shared interest in property bound family members together and provided a cause for dispute, especially in debt relationships and ownership or other access to real estate. Like property, women who married became a bond between two families and also a source of contention between them. A woman’s blood relatives and new family might clash over her behavior or her treatment at the hands of her husband and his family. Furthermore, inheritance and the gift of a dowry meant that property could also become wrapped up in marriage issues between the two families.≤π Like the family as a whole, marriage and sexual relations were less rigidly structured than the prescriptive literature suggests, leaving a great deal of space for married individuals to find their way through their particular relationship. This space included opportunities for testing and even breaking the boundaries of marriage through such acts as adultery and abandonment. Guido Ruggiero has remarked that in Italy ‘‘marriage was too central an institution in Renaissance society to work consistently,’’ and the same was true for seventeenth-century Castile.≤∫ Women thus found themselves in the middle, as a connector between families, as a carrier of property rights, and as the potentially weak link in sexual propriety whose adultery was viewed as much more consequential than men’s.≤Ω As we saw in the previous chapter, women were able to act informally to pursue their own interests and goals despite their lack of o≈cial power, and this held true for women’s place in the family as well.≥≠ Women had other publicly recognized signs of independence, such as the debts and credit they maintained and the fact that they did not take their husband’s last name. Family and marriage were important but fragile institutions in Castile, and violent confrontation surrounding them reflected this. Even when men perpetrated violence against women, this strategy was just one among several by which people tried to determine the terms of their relationships and the public acknowledgment of those terms. Marriages created ties between families as the new bride—and, eventually, the couple’s children—came to share membership in two di√erent families. Through marriage, property also changed hands between families in the form of dowries and inheritance, and new in-laws often planned to cooperate economically in other ways as well, such as through loans or shared business endeavors. The links created tensions between the birth and marriage families, which competed for the loyalties of their

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shared members. The existence of such dual loyalties may seem obvious, but this arrangement was not the only possibility in early modern Europe. The family took on di√erent forms in other areas and time periods, even in Spain itself. Mudéjares, or Muslims permitted to live in Valencia in the fifteenth century under Christian rule, lived in a family system whereby agnatic (or birth) ties between men, especially fathers, sons, brothers, and uncles, took precedence over a≈nal (or marriage) ties. Mudéjares expected a woman who married to become a member of her husband’s lineage and fully leave her birth family.≥∞ In seventeenth-century Castile, the absence of clear-cut guidelines for in-laws to determine which family should dominate left space open for struggles. Previously we have seen how family members tended to support one another during conflicts with outsiders. This solidarity was especially pronounced among brothers, and it extended all the way down to the bottom of the social order. In Yébenes in 1634, for example, the shepherd Domingo Algueta accused Francisco Ruiz and Juan Martín, two brothers who were also shepherds, of attacking him over a dispute about whose sheep should pass first through a certain point.≥≤ Blood ties fostered cooperation not just in the crisis of violent confrontation but in more concerted and long-term endeavors as well. For example, in 1612 a dispute erupted over the process of nominating new members of the justicia of Yébenes. Eugenio Hernández, a constable, nominated two new constables, including his brother to replace him. The alcalde, Pedro López, who was also a familiar of the Inquisition and a butcher by trade, discarded Hernández’s nominees and replaced them with his own, including his own brother. After Hernández rose from his seat angrily to argue with López, the alcalde ordered that Hernández be locked up in jail, and later López prosecuted a criminal case against Hernández and testified on his own behalf. Although López explained his action by saying that Hernández ‘‘did ill by wanting to name his brother as chief constable,’’ both sides were pursuing a policy of nepotism and using the rhetoric of honor to do so, abusing public o≈ce and slandering each other in public.≥≥ Family solidarity sometimes broke down, however, and when it did the divisions often featured in-laws squaring o√. Property arrangements did not always work out, for example. In Yébenes in 1611, Pedro Fernández Bujío and his brother-in-law Pedro Cobo accused Catalina Hernández, Bujío’s sister and Cobo’s sister-in-law, of having said that the two

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men were ‘‘thieves and bellacos and that they wanted to seize the estate that was hers away from her.’’ A scribe who went to serve a notice against her and her husband reported that an emotional Hernández confronted him and claimed that Bujío and Cobo ‘‘treated her badly in seeking a partition of that which was hers and which she and her husband had inherited and worked, and they wrongfully claimed a piece of the house that she and her husband had built.’’ Getting down on her knees, she ‘‘begged God that an evil lightning-bolt would descend from the sky onto whoever wanted to take away that which was mine and which I had tilled.’’≥∂ Clearly the distribution of property within Hernández’s agnatic family led to severe conflict, as demonstrated by the dispute between her and her brother, and the involvement of her husband and brother-in-law demonstrates that marriage had brought in at least two other families as well. If property could cause problems, so could family businesses. In 1646, Francisco Martín and his brother-in-law Alonso Fernández fought over the control and operation of a Yébenes inn. The judicial authorities heard from witnesses that Martín approached Fernández in Martín Carrasco’s inn and asked him not to write up its deed (presumably to sell it to a third party), and when Fernández refused they argued and fought. Several people came to make peace between them, including the father-inlaw of both men, Estevan Ruiz Paninas, who unintentionally cut and injured another would-be peacemaker. Ruiz Paninas was also an innkeeper, so it is likely that Martín and Fernández became involved in the inn-keeping business by marrying his two daughters, entangling the economic and family concerns that erupted during this incident.≥∑ In a similar case in Toral, a village near León, Juan Crespo killed Hernando Gorgoxo in 1649 in a dispute over how much money Gorgoxo owed an associate of Crespo’s for some wheat. The two men were millers who shared a business together. They had been brothers-in-law, but Gorgoxo’s wife, Crespo’s sister, had died, and Gorgoxo had married a woman from another family. The business and family interests of the two men had once coincided, but they no longer did. This tension probably helped the conflict over the payment to escalate as Crespo gave the lie to Gorgoxo, called him a ‘‘shameless pícaro,’’ and struck him with a pole, killing him. It certainly helped exacerbate the criminal case, because Gorgoxo’s new wife (and now widow), Ysavel García, pressed Crespo for as much money

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as she could get to support herself and her children before she would grant him a private pardon.≥∏ In-laws did not have to divide property or run businesses together in order to fall out; debt, credit, and price could trouble relationships too. One evening in 1615, for example, Juan Serrano reported that his brotherin-law Francisco García Hinojosa and another man visited Serrano at his house to collect a debt. Serrano turned them away, but García Hinojosa returned later and gave his in-law a kick. Serrano went after him, and in the ensuing confrontation García Hinojosa hit and injured Serrano in the head with a stone.≥π Family members also became ensnared in disputes over exchanges that could not be quantified or given a market value.≥∫ In an example discussed in chapter 3, in Yébenes in 1615, Alonso Díaz, a peasant, accused his brother-in-law Francisco Sánchez, a shopkeeper, of entering his house. Sánchez spoke to Díaz about having Díaz’s wife, María Palacios, wash Sánchez’s son’s clothes, and Díaz responded, ‘‘Why shouldn’t they be washed in his own house?’’ To this Sánchez called Díaz ‘‘a drunken, disreputable bellaco’’ and smashed him in the head with a small pitcher. Díaz died about a month later, and his widow, María Palacios, pursued a criminal suit against Sánchez all the way up to the beginnings of a formal trial. During the criminal investigation more complicated links between the two couples surfaced. Sánchez and Díaz were brothers-in-law, each of them having married one of a pair of sisters, and at various points in the investigation and trial the two couples were described alternately as sharing a household and as living in two separate houses. Furthermore, Sánchez maintained that Palacios was accustomed to washing Sánchez’s son’s clothes. Palacios eventually pardoned Sánchez, who claimed that the wound he gave her husband had healed properly and that her husband died from another cause, but one condition of the pardon was that Sánchez could no longer live in the house of her mother, his mother-in-law, María de Palacios.≥Ω Here was a family network in which individual nuclear households were not clearly demarcated, helping fuel the violent confrontation that may have contributed to Díaz’s death. Another example of a dispute that was not directly related to property or money comes from 1609, when Juan de Arroba encountered his brother-in-law Lic. Eugenio Muñoz walking along the Calle Real outside the church of San Juan with a priest. Yébenes authorities accused Arroba,

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a peasant, of having ‘‘threatened and challenged to a duel’’ Muñoz, the holder of a university degree and the governador of Yébenes, and said that when Juan Bermejo, a bystander, told Arroba to ‘‘be quiet’’ and that he ‘‘should have respect for honorable men,’’ he responded ‘‘angrily, causing a disturbance.’’ When questioned Arroba explained that in truth he had removed his hat and said to Muñoz, ‘‘You did very well by me, sir, when you had me arrested although I am without guilt.’’ According to Arroba, Muñoz responded, ‘‘You did have some guilt.’’ When Arroba made more polite protests of his good character, Muñoz responded, ‘‘Get away from here, shameless one.’’∂≠ No matter whose version of the story was correct, Arroba stressed the fact that the two men were related by marriage, and as such he wished to be treated well. Muñoz and Bermejo emphasized the obligations of the o≈ce that Muñoz held and the social distance between them. The two men disagreed as to what the marriage alliance that joined them should mean. Family conflicts provided a great temptation for employing the rhetoric of honor. The system of exchange that linked families and households together was governed mostly by internal, informal arrangements, especially transactions that were not measurable in market terms. If the unstated family ties were not enough to guarantee good, generous behavior, calling out a relative in public brought the issue out of the privacy of the family and into the glare of the public, bringing reputation in the community as a whole to bear. After all, issues such as property rights were public, and even internal family arrangements were not very private in the close environment of a premodern town. In the last example, both Arroba and Muñoz made reference to their character, and Arroba was accused of challenging his brother-in-law to a duel. Similar strategies were pursued by all the parties in the examples above, both during the initial confrontation and during the judicial procedures that followed. As was customary, the trials of both Juan Crespo and Francisco Sánchez saw much reference to the characters of the assailant and victim by the accused, accusers, and witnesses. Disputes between in-laws became more explosive when they involved the women who embodied the link between the families. We have already seen how men in Yébenes could come to the defense of their female relatives when threatened, and the Good Friday Pardons o√er more examples. In Málaga in 1626, Mateo Sánchez went to visit his aunt María

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Hernández. When he arrived, he explained later to authorities, he found her crying, and she begged him ‘‘for the love of God, [to] tell her husband to treat her well.’’ When her husband, Sebastián Duque, entered the house, Sánchez told him to do just that, adding, ‘‘for she is an honorable woman.’’ Duque asked him, ‘‘Who put you in this?’’ then shoved him and drew his dagger. Sánchez threw two rocks at his uncle and then went home to arm himself, returning to stab Duque in the chest and kill him.∂∞ Another fight between in-laws over the woman who linked them occurred in 1626 in De la Fia, when Bartolomé Hernández killed his brother-in-law Juan Gordillo. Gordillo, who had recently separated from and then reconciled with his wife, Ysavel Dessalas, Hernández’s sister, explained during the judicial inquiry that he began arguing with Dessalas when she criticized him for breaking some plates one morning while breakfasting with her birth family. As the dispute escalated, Gordillo told his wife that ‘‘he swore to God that she would die by his hands.’’ Hernández told his brother-in-law to be silent, and Gordillo replied that he did not wish to do so, drawing his sword. Not carrying a sword, Hernández seized a loaded shotgun and used it to beat his brother-in-law to death.∂≤ In-laws might also quarrel over the misbehavior of the woman who linked them. In Yébenes in 1627 Catalina Sánchez got into a fight with her brother Sebastián de Villareal and his sons Juan and Pedro de Villareal. Di√erent witnesses from among the family, including a sister and brotherin-law of Catalina and Sebastián’s, provided somewhat conflicting testimony over how the dispute began, but it appears that the male members of the family were concerned that Catalina’s daughter, also named Catalina Sánchez, was bringing scandal to the family in some way. Either Juan de Villareal told his aunt Catalina that ‘‘you speak infamously,’’ or his brother Pedro announced that if Catalina’s son-in-law ‘‘had any honor, he would kill Catalina Sánchez [the daughter].’’ Another deponent, from outside the family, heard Juan de Villareal threaten Catalina Sánchez and tell her ‘‘that she should set her daughter straight or else it would be thought that through this scandal they had made bellacos of them.’’ Whatever the remarks were that triggered the altercation, they were said in the presence of other family members and, according to witnesses from outside the family, led to Juan, Pedro, and their father, Sebastián, punching, kicking, and throwing things at Catalina until others made them stop.∂≥ To complicate matters further, it seems that Catalina Sánchez, her husband, and

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another sister and her husband all lived with their mother, in whose house the incident took place. Kinship and household ties in this family prevented any clear demarcation between nuclear families, and the public reputation of one family member was thought to jeopardize the reputation of the rest. In another example from Yébenes, a man criticizing a woman’s behavior prompted a male relative of hers to confront him. In 1632 Juan de Balboa brought suit against Gabriel Ruiz for approaching him and his brother Francisco de Balboa with rocks in his hands and calling them ‘‘thieving pícaros.’’ The confrontation began because Juan and Francisco de Balboa were fighting with their sister-in-law Ysabel Ruiz, wife of their brother Diego de Balboa and sister of Gabriel Ruiz. Ysabel called out for Gabriel and another brother, Juan, and they arrived, Gabriel with the rocks and Juan with a rod. When questioned by the agents of the fiel del juzgado, Gabriel denied having defamed the Balboa brothers and swore that since their brother was married to his sister, ‘‘he holds [them] as honorable people.’’ He only took issue with them because they were ‘‘fighting with his sister and their sister-in-law and in order to stop them from fighting.’’ Another witness claimed that the whole row began when the Balboa brothers called Ysabel ‘‘a shameless gossip and troublemaker.’’∂∂ So it seems that Ysabel somehow provoked her brothers-in-law to attack her, which in turn provoked her brothers to rush to her defense. This type of widening, escalating confrontation was not confined to Yébenes. In 1622 in Jadraque, near Guadalajara, Francisca de Bívar told the judicial authorities that she had fled to the house of her brother Cristoval de Bívar in fear of her husband, Antón de la Puente. She burst into Cristoval’s house, closed the door, told him and his wife that she was afraid her husband would kill her, then hid under a bed. De la Puente had beaten his wife the night before, and on the evening in question he had told her that when his father came to their house and asked if they had any bread or flour, and she told him no and that she would accept some from him if he o√ered it, her behavior had been ‘‘shameless.’’ Upon hearing his sister’s story, Cristoval resolved to go inform the justicia, but as soon as he left his house to do so, de la Puente set upon him and killed him, having followed his wife to the house and waited outside. Hearing her brother’s cries outside, Francisca began screaming for the justicia, saying that her husband had killed her brother while he was defending her.∂∑ In a twist on

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the theme of protecting a female relative, in Madrid in 1628 when Ana de Salaçar needed protection from her husband, it was her mother, María Rodrígues, who came to her defense. Salaçar brought a criminal complaint against her husband, Baltasar Abendaños, accusing him of having become angry with her over a matter of having eaten some eels one day. Rodrígues was eating dinner with the couple in their house when the quarrel occurred, and she supported her daughter’s position, prompting Salaçar to remark that her mother gave good advice. Abendaños’s response was to strike his wife, giving her a bruise in the face, and threaten to kill her. Salaçar fled to Rodrígues’s house. There Abendaños’s own mother came to entreat Rodrígues to persuade her daughter to return lest Abendaños kill her. Salaçar agreed to return, but as her mother and mother-in-law were escorting her back they encountered Abendaños, who grabbed his wife by the hair and threw her to the ground. When Rodrígues tried to intervene in favor of her daughter, Abendaños struck her in the head with some keys, giving her a wound from which she died five days later.∂∏ While Abendaños seems to have been a particularly loathsome individual, the scenario that led to his killing his mother-in-law fits the pattern of in-laws quarreling over the behavior and treatment of the woman who joined the two families by marriage. The ties between the two families joined in marriage were so important, and so fraught with expectations, that conflict also arose over the prospect of marriage. Again the women found themselves caught in the middle of a√airs. In an earlier chapter it was recounted how the tailor Pedro Trebiño stood accused of beating the young man Francisco Abad in Yébenes for pursuing Trebiño’s niece. Abad had been walking around in the street outside her house when he asked Trebiño to step out of his way. Trebiño refused and instead gave him three or four blows with a cudgel or the flat of his sword to discourage Abad’s unwelcome attentions toward the girl.∂π Tensions over a match could remain after the marriage if the young couple acted without the approval of their families. In Yébenes in 1628 Pedro Chico brought a criminal complaint against Juan López Sevilla for entering his house and beating his wife, Ana García, with some iron keys until she was bloody. López Sevilla was García’s sister’s husband, and a witness presented by Chico said that García’s father, Pedro Martín, accompanied him. When the witness had asked what the fight was about, they responded that García had recently married Chico ‘‘with-

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out permission.’’ In his defense, López Sevilla said it was Martín who was beating García, and that he only entered the fray to stop his father-in-law.∂∫ One reason why the prospect of marriage could be so controversial was the expectation of a reallocation of resources. In 1615 o≈cials of the fiel del juzgado opened an investigation against the peasant Alonso Miguel de Sandobal for having beaten his mother, the sixty-year-old widow Catalina de Sandobal. When questioned about the incident, the widow explained that her son had planned to marry and go live with his bride in another house. She had granted her son a substantial amount of her property under the condition that he remain with her and attend to her. Because he was planning to move out, however, Catalina demanded that he return the deed (‘‘escritura’’) of the property back to her so that she could then divide all her property equally among her children. Alonso refused, denying that there had been any condition attached. His mother defended her son during the investigation, explaining that Alonso had not intentionally hurt her, but that she had grabbed hold of his cape while imploring him to return the deed and when he yanked the cape away she fell and hurt her head. ‘‘He loves her greatly and is very obedient,’’ the scribe recorded as Catalina’s explanation for why her son would never hurt her intentionally, and Miguel and other witnesses repeated the explanation for her wound.∂Ω Catalina granted her son a larger share of the family’s property in exchange for his service, but Alonso believed the two should be separate. They both agreed, however, that his marriage would fundamentally change their relationship and the structure of their family, since he would leave his mother’s house and start his own family and not be able to devote as much support—emotional and otherwise—to his mother. Similar fears that a marriage would cause the disruptive rearrangement of a family, threatening the expectations of inheritance, may have been behind the threats that Pedro and Bartolomé Cid gave to Pretonila Gómez, their father’s fiancée. One day in 1611 the two young men burst into Gómez’s house with drawn swords and asked if their father, Francisco Cid, was there. Gómez replied that he was not, and Bartolomé asked, ‘‘And your grace wants to be my mother?’’ Gómez told him, ‘‘Go ask your father,’’ and Bartolomé answered, ‘‘Well, I swear to God that if you marry him I have to take your life.’’∑≠ The following year María Gómez—who may have been Pretonila’s sister—complained to the authorities that one night Pedro

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Cid appeared at her house with Francisco, the slave of the miller Pedro de Losa, as an accomplice. Although she asked Cid to ‘‘go with God’’ and would not let him in, Cid told her to ‘‘open or I swear to God that I will throw your doors down onto the ground.’’ She refused, and he made good on his promise, breaking her doors and entering the house. Then he stripped o√ her girdle, threw her from her bed to the ground, and, while covering her mouth with one hand to prevent her from crying out, used his other hand to whip her with the girdle. Meanwhile the slave Francisco covered the mouth of Gómez’s fourteen-year-old daughter to keep her from crying out. Perhaps Gómez was another candidate for Cid’s father’s remarriage.∑∞ This dynamic of sons acting against a woman close to their father repeated itself in Trujillo in 1632. There the authorities discovered that the twenty-four-year-old Ana González had been attacked, and they took her statement. She explained that Pedro and Juan Sánchez found her alone in their father’s mill, where she had recently become a servant. They ordered her to leave, then followed her down the road, where they seized her, lifted her skirts to whip her buttocks until they were ‘‘blacker than pitch,’’ and finished by cutting her face from ear to mouth. By choosing the sexually charged whipping and the extreme cruelty of permanently scarring her face, the brothers sent a powerful message to the young woman that she was not welcome as part of their father’s household, and that they would stop at nothing in order to keep her out. González took heed. When her employer, Antón Sánchez, came to the house where she was recuperating to bring her back, she refused to go with him and began shouting for help. When asked why she did not tell the justicia earlier, she said she kept silent out of fear of the two brothers, who had cut the faces of other young women before. Again, perhaps the two sons thought her relationship represented a threat to their inheritance. After all, even though she claimed only to be a servant, just prior to coming to live with Sánchez she had been arrested and jailed for concubinage.∑≤ Whipping, threats, beatings, and defamation introduced public reputation into these disagreements about marriage. This was especially so in the one case of rape that appeared in the criminal records from Yébenes in the first half of the seventeenth century. Pedro Felipe brought a charge of estupro, a legal term that specifically meant forcible sex with a virgin, against Pedro Carrasco for having violated his daughter Juana Rodríguez.∑≥ In her testimony, the sixteen-year-old Rodríguez supplied the narrative

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details to support such a charge, explaining how in 1628, while she and other residents of Yébenes were working during the harvest in the nearby town of Consuegra, Pedro Carrasco entered the building she was in and told her to give him a pitcher she was holding. She refused to give it to him and asked why she should, and he ‘‘tried to urge her to let go of it, and saying this and making her let go he stretched her out between two large earthen jars, and placing a handkerchief over her mouth, against her will and violently, he took his pleasure with her and deflowered her, and in light of this, because she was a√ronted and without honor, this deponent [Juana Rodríguez] asked why he had wanted to come to this place and for this reason, and Pedro responded, ‘Be quiet, do not cry for I am going to marry you.’ ’’ When asked if anyone was present when he promised to marry her, she said no, but that a young man called Tomás Sánchez and Antón de la Paz, the slave of Maestro Parraga, were there when he raped her.∑∂ When questioned, Tomás Sánchez and Antón de la Paz gave a somewhat di√erent story. When asked whether he was present when Carrasco assaulted Rodríguez, Sánchez claimed that he did not see anything. Sánchez said he only heard a rumor and asked Rodríguez, ‘‘Juana, is it true that you are going around misbehaving with Pedro Carrasco?’’ to which she replied, ‘‘Whoever said that lies, and I have nothing to do with that one.’’ For his part, de la Paz said he came up to the building where Rodríguez and Carrasco were and started shouting for them to bring him some food. They did not respond, so he went inside to the kitchen, where he found them. When Rodríguez and Carrasco told him they had not heard him shouting, de la Paz said that he could not understand why not unless they were deaf or ‘‘unless you were up to something.’’ Juana Rodríguez told him that he lied and called him a drunkard, then de la Paz told Carrasco, ‘‘Come here, Pedro, there is something up with this girl.’’ Carrasco told him ‘‘that he did not have anything to do with her, that she is a little drunkard.’’ De la Paz further testified that he had heard that Pedro Felipe was bringing a criminal suit against Carrasco for having raped his daughter.∑∑ The conflicting testimonies of Juana Rodríguez and the other deponents (there is no record of the accused, Pedro Carrasco, testifying) displayed all the ambiguities of trials for estupro in early modern Spain and the rest of Europe. It may be the case that Carrasco raped Rodríguez violently and completely against her will, as she claimed. Or it may be that

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Rodríguez consented, to some degree, to sex with the understanding that he would marry her later. While alien to today’s sensibilities, in early modern Europe bringing a complaint of estupro was a time-honored strategy for forcing a woman’s lover to make good on promises of marriage made before the young couple had intercourse, and perhaps that is what Pedro Felipe was doing here.∑∏ If so, his aim was probably to force Carrasco to either marry Rodríguez or provide a dowry for her so she could make a good match with someone else. The records of this suit end after it was remitted to the fiel del juzgado, so there is no way of knowing what actually happened or how the case turned out. What is important is that the politics of who should marry whom, and how a woman should be treated by other men, once again led to a dispute in which both sides resorted to the rhetoric of honor, including remarks about character, giving the lie, possible violence, and a criminal complaint. While most of the examples of family conflict involved in-laws fighting with one another, birth families could also fracture and initiate violent confrontation, especially over matters of property, money, and the allocation of shared resources. In Zamora in 1628 two brothers, Sebastián and Domingo Cuadrado, argued over the profits of some hogs they had butchered together; Sebastián drew a butcher’s knife he had used for cutting the hogs’ throats and stabbed his brother in the back, giving him a mortal wound.∑π In Yébenes in 1611, a family fought over resources that, unlike profits from slaughtering pigs, were not measurable in market terms when Francisco Cid brought a criminal suit against his own son, Pedro Cid. Pedro had arrived at his father’s house one night at midnight expecting to eat there, but Francisco would not let him in. This led to an argument, with non–family members trying to get Pedro to leave in order to prevent ‘‘any misfortune.’’ Later Francisco granted his son a private pardon.∑∫ Like in-laws, members of the same agnatic family could even get into a dispute over the treatment of women: in Madrid in 1644 Joseph de Quiroga got into a fight with his younger brother Estevan de Quiroga that led to Estevan’s death. Estevan called Joseph’s wife a whore, Joseph gave Estevan the lie, and Estevan called his brother a ‘‘bastard cuckold’’ and challenged him to fight.∑Ω As in other types of disputes, the rhetoric of honor could help reconcile as well as exacerbate a family conflict. Attempts at reconciliation could even go so far as denying that there had been a violent conflict at all in an

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attempt to block the judicial authorities from intervening and allow family members to solve the dispute among themselves. In 1609 when a constable of the fiel del juzgado denounced Roque Zerbantes for having hurt his brother-in-law Andrés Rubio in a fight, both men denied that they had fought at all, let alone that one had wounded the other. They claimed that Rubio’s injury was an accident, and Rubio added that ‘‘he would not fight with him [Zerbantes] because he has great respect for him and he is his godfather.’’ They voiced this story even though other witnesses had seen and heard them fighting.∏≠ Historians have found that elsewhere women could play special conciliatory roles, bridging their birth families with the families they married into, and there is evidence of this in the criminal records of Castile as well.∏∞ In Madrid in 1642, for example, Francisca and Sebastiana Martínez explained that the two of them were outside their sister Jusepa’s house one night when their brother Gaspar Martínez walked by. Jusepa emerged from her house with her baby in her arms, saying to her brother, ‘‘See, here is your nephew,’’ and giving her son to Gaspar to cradle in his arms. Just then Jusepa’s husband, Pedro Carrasco, returned home and discovered his brother-in-law, whom he had ordered previously never to come to his house. He began to slap Jusepa. Gaspar then challenged Carrasco over his treatment of Jusepa and asserted his right to visit his nephew, which led to the two men drawing their swords. Carrasco was wounded and later died.∏≤ The death was the tragic result of Jusepa trying to maintain connections to both her agnatic family and her husband, estranged from one another, as she defied her husband’s attempt to control his household. In all of these family disputes, early modern Castilians used the rhetoric of honor. The conflicts concerned matters that were open to the scrutiny of the entire community, including property, the allocation of resources among the family, and the proper behavior and treatment of women who moved from one family to another. The boundaries of the family were not clear, especially for women who were attached to both the family of their birth and the family they had married into. In addition, the household was not an entirely private institution in early modern Europe, and the boundaries of family and household were not necessarily coterminous, as shown by the dispute about Gaspar Martínez visiting his sister and nephew despite his brother-in-law’s command to stay away from his house. For these reasons, family dynamics were as open to violent con-

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frontation over reputation as any other important social institution, as a way to dispute identity, belonging, and proper conduct.∏≥

adultery Marriage was no more immune to violent confrontation than other family relationships, and adultery posed the most serious threat to marriage. Yet Golden Age Castilians responded similarly to adultery as they did to other family conflicts, by employing the rhetoric of honor. Violence was perhaps more common or more extreme when adultery was involved, but it is hard to tell from the sources that are available.∏∂ References to adultery in the criminal records from Yébenes from 1600 to 1650, although numerous, did not tend to be very serious. In contrast, the Good Friday Pardons from this period include few cases of actual adultery, but as with almost all the royal pardons homicide was usually involved. Perhaps surprisingly, even those extremely violent examples from the Good Friday Pardons involved many of the same dynamics of conflict as other family disputes, including tension between in-laws, concern over the behavior and treatment of women, and the distribution and use of economic resources.∏∑ The reality of violence and the homicide of wives was significantly di√erent than its portrayal on stage in the honor plays of the seventeenth century. Playwrights such as Calderón and Lope de Vega depicted a distorted view of adultery and homicide, focusing only on the adultery itself and its emotional consequences while ignoring the other elements of family conflict that were entangled in most of the adultery cases from the royal pardons. While there were plenty of references to adultery in the criminal records from Yébenes, they were usually casual—none led to homicide, and many did not spark any violent response at all. There were at least two sincere accusations of adultery that husbands made against their wives in Yébenes between 1600 and 1650, but neither of these led to violence either. In 1633 Pedro Barba brought a complaint against Sebastián Rubio for having entered his house while he was not there and having ‘‘violated my bed.’’ He also opened a complaint against his wife, Ana Ruiz, and against the alcalde Juan Cordobés for coming to the house after Rubio committed the crime but not apprehending him. There is no further record of the case except for some legal wrangling about who would represent whom.∏∏ And in 1626 Mateo Vega, a town crier, brought a suit against his wife, Ana López, and against the peasant Alonso del Castillo y

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Villarubia because the two of them had gone o√ to live together publicly in concubinage in Toledo. Using the rhetoric of honor, Vega complained that López had acted ‘‘without having attention to the obligations that she ought to keep which are required in the state of matrimony, scorning the fear of God and with great danger to her conscience, and also of having violated her honesty with base and dishonest actions, and only with the aim of taking my honor from me and a√ronting me.’’∏π In neither of these cases did the cuckolded husband choose violent action, preferring instead legal action. Mateo Vega eventually even pardoned his wife and her lover. By their very nature, all the Good Friday Pardons dealing with adultery involved someone’s death. Some of them were plain, unadorned tales in which adultery seems to have been the sole cause of the homicide. In a case mentioned above, for example, in 1643 Madrid resident Mateo Serrano killed his wife, Polonia de Lea, and Lope Díaz, a thirty-year-old servant who worked Serrano’s lands for him, when he found the two of them having sex one night in the storeroom while he played cards with two friends elsewhere in his house. Díaz, who lived long enough after being wounded to give a statement to the justicia, confessed that he and his mistress had had sex secretly four times in the past half year. In this instance, de Lea went into the storeroom, and Díaz, taking advantage of his employer’s distraction while gambling, followed her there and extinguished the light. While the two had intercourse, Serrano entered the room and attacked Díaz. He then left o√ to attack his wife, giving Díaz a chance to run out of the house and get a servant at a neighboring house to help him get medical treatment for his injured head.∏∫ A similarly straightforward case occurred in the Asturian village of Siero, near Oviedo, in 1629. Cristobal de Miranda, a priest, was found dead in the house of Diego de Palacio y Otura with wounds to the face and head, while Palacio y Otura and his wife were nowhere to be found. No one knew where the couple had gone, but one witness explained that Palacio y Otura had killed the priest because he found him with his wife.∏Ω Such cut-and-dried cases in which adultery seems to have been the only motive for wife murder were the exception, not the rule, among the sixteen Good Friday Pardons that involved homicide (or its threat) and illicit sex in the first half of the seventeenth century. More often, these cases incorporated other elements of family disputes along with adultery. It is easy to see how adultery could a√ect other social relations between

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members of a family, both blood relatives and in-laws. According to a story told by María del Oyo of Torrubia in an attempt to win a Good Friday Pardon for herself, in 1632 her husband, Francisco Desteras; her brother Diego del Oyo; and two other men confronted her about her illicit relationship with Francisco Garçes.π≠ The four men told María that they planned to kill Garçes, and she went to warn him of the danger, telling him to meet her in her house where she would explain what had happened. Unfortunately, it seems that María’s husband and brother had tricked her into trapping Garçes, for they came into the house when he arrived and murdered him. Afterward they boasted to María of what they had done and displayed the body in town for a while before disposing of it out in the countryside, where it was discovered some days later.π∞ Here was a family problem seen often in other, less-bloody criminal cases— concern over a woman’s undesirable conduct—but in this case it united in-laws instead of dividing them, as her brother and husband agreed on a course of action and cooperated in carrying it out. In another case, homicide resulted from another issue that frequently led to disputes among families: the desire for an impermissible marriage. One morning in Madrid in 1626, Gerónimo de Orna stabbed his wife, Gerónima de Çivantes, twelve times. Before she died, Çivantes told the justicia that the only possible reason for Orna’s actions was that he was keeping a courtesan as his mistress, he wished to marry her, and he and Çivantes had had several quarrels about the situation.π≤ Dissatisfied in his marriage, Orna seems to have used homicide as a way to break up his existing family relationships and allow himself to create a new one, presumably after fleeing with his mistress to a di√erent locale. Other cases of adultery and homicide arose from the ambiguities surrounding the boundaries between household and family. In Seville in 1637, Sebastián Alonso was married to Ynés Sánchez but carrying on an a√air with her stepsister María de la Cruz de Silba. According to de la Cruz de Silba’s mother (and Sánchez’s stepmother), Alonso had been ‘‘going around’’ the neighborhood for four years ‘‘defaming and dishonoring’’ de la Cruz de Silba and ‘‘persuading her to have carnal relations with him.’’ De la Cruz de Silba acquiesced to Alonso’s advances, despite the e√orts of her mother to stop the a√air, and gave birth to two daughters, said to be Alonso’s. Finally he ended the relationship, thanks in part to a criminal suit against him. In an e√ort to prevent Alonso from returning to his old

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behavior, family members arranged to have him stand as godfather to her children. Nevertheless he returned to verbal abuse against de la Cruz de Silba in order to resume his a√air with her. Unable to take care of her daughters, de la Cruz de Silba sent one of them to Alonso’s house one day for him and his wife to raise. Sánchez came to the house where de la Cruz de Silba lived with her mother and asked her, ‘‘My godmother, why have you sent this girl to my house today even though you love her so much?’’ De la Cruz de Silba responded, ‘‘Godmother, because her father should care for her since I am poor.’’ Sánchez agreed, and while the two stepsisters arranged to have the second child sent to Sánchez’s house the next day, Alonso called from the street below. At first de la Cruz de Silba told him to go away, but he returned and called again, inducing her to go down to speak with him. The next thing the women upstairs heard was de la Cruz de Silba screaming, ‘‘He has killed me, he has killed me!’’ Sánchez rushed downstairs to find de la Cruz de Silba covered in blood and with slashes on her face, from which she soon died.π≥ In this case, women struggled to repair the damage done by a man who married into their family. Alonso did not respect the boundaries of his own household, looking elsewhere in his wife’s family for sexual favors and coercing his sister-in-law. He refused to accept the consequences of his behavior and violently rejected the attempt to bring his lover’s children, who were likely his own, into his household. Meanwhile the women employed various strategies to try to control Alonso and solve the problems he created, first urging him to leave de la Cruz de Silba alone, then bringing a criminal case against him, then trying to rein in his behavior with an additional family bond, godparenthood. They also manipulated family ties to alter household arrangements, agreeing to send the two young girls to a household that could better care for them. Sánchez, put in a hard position, was probably more willing to accept her husband’s illegitimate children into her household because they were also her stepnieces. Meanwhile Alonso was using the rituals of violent confrontation, including verbal abuse and physical violence, to bend the sexual and caregiving arrangements of the family in a manner that suited him—behavior that should alert us to the fact that not all of the adulterous relationships that led to violence were completely consensual.π∂ A similar case occurred in Seville in 1647. Juan Grande, a servant in the household of Don Pedro Desqueber, explained to authorities that

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another servant in the house, Luciana, had been carrying on an a√air with a young rope maker named Alonso. Alonso had removed Luciana from the house and, with a group of other young men, bragged that he would beat Juan Grande and another of Desqueber’s servants, Luciana’s cousin, to death. Although Grande was unrelated to Luciana, Alonso apparently saw him as a potential enemy, perhaps fearing that Grande would feel loyalty to the household in which he, as a servant, worked and lived. If so, he would report the a√air to Desqueber, who might see Alonso’s actions as an a√ront to the household and take action to protect the young female servant for whom he acted as a father figure. Some time after the abduction and threats, Grande ran into Alonso and two of his friends one Sunday. Grande challenged Alonso, and when Alonso replied that ‘‘he did not know him,’’ Grande punched him. One of the friends stabbed Grande in response, eventually resulting in his death.π∑ Here, a young man’s desire to protect his unorthodox sexual liaison from the scrutiny and control of others led to homicide. As in other family conflicts, property and the distribution of resources often became entangled with the issue of illicit sex. When Martín de la Torre killed his wife, Doña Catalina Pareja, in Madrid in 1647, her brother explained that de la Torre ‘‘did not have the blame and that it was for an honorable cause,’’ implying adultery. Furthermore, the couple had been recently reconciled after having been divorced, and Pareja had sued to get control of her dowry from her husband.π∏ And in Carmona one night in 1629 Cristoval Giménez stabbed his wife, Polonia Gilchey, to death. Previously Giménez had accused Gilchey of committing adultery, robbing his house, and trying to have him killed, and the justicia of the city had sentenced her to four years of exile. Giménez killed her after she broke the terms of the exile and returned to Carmona. The couple’s eighteen-year-old daughter granted her father a private pardon, forgiving him because of her mother’s transgressions.ππ As with other family disputes, less-marketable resources were also at stake in adultery cases. In Talavera in 1630, Lucas Gómez killed his wife, Luisa Gómez, for having carried on an adulterous a√air with Baltasar de la Casa. According to a witness, Luisa had admitted a day or so earlier that she used to go to the house of a third party, Francisca Ximénez, to eat rich dinners with de la Casa, and she prostituted herself with him. She stopped because of the fights she had with her husband over it, but she was tempted to return to

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her meetings with de la Casa because she and her husband were so poor they did not have enough food.π∫ The exchange and sharing of meals and sex were normally part of the relationship between husbands and wives, but in this case Luisa decided to transfer both of these rituals to another man when her own household was lacking. A similar link between food and sex appeared in a case from Seville in 1648. Alberto Ciudad, a pastry baker, stood accused of killing his wife, Beatris de San Bernardo, because she met the barber Pedro del Río every Friday and Saturday in a nearby house owned by del Río. According to a servant, one day San Bernardo ate a pie that Ciudad had made, then said, ‘‘What kind of pie is this which gives me a stomachache?’’ In response, Ciudad implied that the pie contained poison: ‘‘Well,’’ he asked, ‘‘is there any reason why I should want to kill you?’’ San Bernardo began vomiting, and the next day the servant found her dead, with her throat cut.πΩ The adultery between San Bernardo and del Río had gone on for several years and was public knowledge to everyone in the community, except perhaps San Bernardo’s husband. Indeed, another aspect of adultery and homicide was the involvement of the wider community outside the family. Francisco de Osuna, in Compass for All Estates, warns that adultery was a deception committed not just against one’s spouse and against God but also against the community, since one’s neighbors had come to the public marriage ceremony and served as witnesses and ‘‘guarantors’’ to one’s vows of loyalty.∫≠ Certainly, according to the Good Friday Pardons, adultery was often widespread knowledge among the neighbors. In 1636 in Baena, near Córdoba, Juan Bautista was found dead in his house after having come home and surprised his wife, María de la Paz, and her lover, Juan de Olibera. Witnesses said that it was public knowledge that Olibera had been courting de la Paz for some time, entering her house when her husband was away. De la Paz claimed that Olibera had forced his way into her house, and that may have been true, but nevertheless the widespread belief among her neighbors was that she was involved in an illicit a√air.∫∞ Such knowledge put the reputations of both wife and husband in jeopardy, as was certainly the case above when Sebastián Alonso induced his sister-in-law to have sex with him by publicly defaming her, leading to her pregnancies. Even if an adulterous couple had been successful in keeping their a√air hidden from the community, the violent confrontations that were used to resolve the issue made it public, as in the

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example above in which Mateo Serrano murdered his wife and servant upon discovering them in the storeroom. Early modern Castilians could also involve themselves more directly in the adultery of their neighbors, either to encourage a√airs or to try to end them. In an example above, Francisca Ximénez provided her house as a meeting place for Luisa Gómez and her adulterous lover, Baltasar de la Casa. In another example, in Madrid in 1634 Miguel Gelez was killed when he returned to his lodgings and his wife’s lover surprised him, stabbing him in the eye. Ysavel García, the servant of Gelez’s wife, Francisca de Porres, explained that Porres had been introduced to her husband’s killer by two neighbors, a Portuguese mother and daughter both named Augustina Navamete. They had approached García and told her that a man named Don Juan de Vergara was interested in Porres. The two women invited Porres and her husband to come and eat at their home, where they introduced Vergara to Porres (and her husband) under the guise of a legitimate social visit. The two women then made their house available for a secret tryst between Vergara and Porres, but Porres refused, saying that ‘‘she would not like a relationship’’ with him. The Navametes called her a fool and ‘‘told her that she did not know how to value the good that could come of it.’’ After a month of being persuaded, Porres finally relented, and Vergara visited her at her house three or four times before the unfortunate encounter with her husband. The servant kept quiet about the a√air at first, but eventually she confessed all this information to the authorities under the threat of torture.∫≤ Servants were especially susceptible to being dragged into the schemes of the adulterous, as demonstrated by Ysavel García above and Jusepa in Cartagena in the first example of this chapter. Gaspar Astete warned masters that ‘‘there are serving women of such little fear of God, and of such little shame, that if they have access to honorable maidens they bring them letters or wicked love-tokens, and are their intermediaries’’ in the pursuit of illicit a√airs.∫≥ And just as the Cartagena authorities connived in the scheme to keep Leandro Baez de Pradilla in the dark by pretending that the forgotten sword belonged to the constable, members of the justicia were susceptible to being co-opted into illicit a√airs. Preventing a homicide was the motivation for the justicia of Ciempozuelos, near Madrid, who intervened in an adulterous situation in 1642. Here, an alcalde prosecuted Francisco de Castro for continually visiting a married

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woman when her husband was absent, on one occasion breaking through her doors even though she had bolstered them to stay shut. It is unclear whether Castro was successful in courting the woman involved, but witnesses claimed that this woman was not the first to attract his improper and unwanted attentions. Although Castro was pardoned, the alcalde met his goal by successfully prosecuting him and saving the reputation and life of the woman. In order to keep the situation as secret as possible, and especially to hide it from her husband and family members, whom the alcalde feared would take bloody revenge on either the woman or Castro, her name was never mentioned in the criminal investigation.∫∂ This procedure seems to have been standard for local authorities when they tried to solve such problems without exacerbating public scandal. The jurist Alfonso de Villadiego advised that if a case involved ‘‘the [illicit] romances of principle people, or honorable maidens, or nuns, or of a married woman,’’ the authorities should operate in secret—and indeed the identity of the woman from Ciempozuelos remains a secret to this day.∫∑ In the two preceding cases, a woman at the crux of an adulterous a√air (or would-be a√air) found herself caught between two men, her husband and her suitor. On other occasions women asserted themselves more openly, trying to shape events and their relationships from their position between the two men. Perhaps the most surprising case of a woman manipulating the men around her involved an anonymous woman living in Madrid in 1635. Witnesses reported that her husband was imprisoned in the jail of the royal court, and that she was in the habit of receiving visits from a certain Don Josephe Ramírez de la Trapera in her house. One morning she visited her husband in jail and upon his return Ramírez accosted her, slapped her in the face, and told her that he did not want her to visit the jail. The married woman responded by calling Ramírez a ‘‘disloyal man’’ for treating her this way while she and three other men were searching for money to release her husband. Some time later, the three friends of the married woman fought with Ramírez. They were pulled apart, but Ramírez went to get more weapons, followed the three men, and was killed.∫∏ This married woman felt her loyalty pulled in several di√erent directions: toward her husband, for whom she was trying to gather enough resources to allow him to leave prison; toward Ramírez, with whom she was having an illicit relationship, perhaps in exchange for money and upkeep while her husband was away; and toward the three

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male friends who were willing to help her search for money and to physically intimidate and ultimately kill Ramírez. A less drastic but more widespread way for women to assert themselves was to challenge the sexual behavior of men, especially their adulterous husbands, and examples of this exist in the court records from Yébenes as well as in the Good Friday Pardons. For example, in Yébenes in 1614 Diego de Buytrago was accused of keeping a married woman whose husband had left town as his mistress, visiting her house and sending her food from his own house. Interestingly, this woman’s name was not written down during the investigation in order to prevent her public disgrace, even though her illicit relationship was said to be public knowledge. Buytrago was also married, and it was also public knowledge that his wife had many quarrels with him over this liaison.∫π Not all husbands whose wives complained about their adultery su√ered their spouses’ complaints as Buytrago did. In 1642 in Pravia, in Asturias, Fernando del Mirando, assisted by his mother, killed his wife, Doña Catalina de Solís, then beheaded and hid the body. Del Mirando admitted to his crime under torture, but the authorities could not understand why he had done it until another witness explained that del Mirando’s wife had caught him having sex with a servant twice and quarreled with him over it.∫∫ What women said publicly, or tried to say, about their relationships with men could also be powerful. In Yébenes in 1612, Pedro García was keeping as his mistress a married woman whose name was not recorded. Another resident of Yébenes reported the a√air to the fiel del juzgado, complaining that the a√air was a public scandal, as was García’s treatment of the woman, beating her to keep her quiet because ‘‘the said woman wanted to speak to others of the sin.’’∫Ω Likewise in Alcalá de Henares in 1648, Francisca de Aquilera was accused of living as the concubine of Captain Don Francisco Gómez when their neighbors discovered that they were not truly married, as they had claimed, and that actually Gómez was married to another woman. Aquilera’s defense was that in truth she was Gómez’s servant, they did not have sexual relations, and she slept in a separate bed. She had told neighbors that they were married, however, ‘‘so as not to lose her reputation’’ as she would have if others believed that they shared the same room but were not married. For his part, Gómez claimed that he did not have sexual relations with Aquilera, nor was he married to any other woman.Ω≠

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Women were not alone in trying to restrain their husbands’ sexual misbehavior. In almost all the cases of concubinage that came before the authorities in Yébenes and elsewhere in Castile, other members of the community acted to bring the case to the authorities’ attention. The wife of Diego de Buytrago may have quarreled with him constantly to try to change his behavior, but he was charged only after his adultery became public—others complained, and the justicia decided to take action. Although there was certainly a double standard in early modern Castile that took male adultery less seriously than women’s illicit sex, male misbehavior could create real scandal in the community and lead the authorities to act. And the women who lashed out to protect their marriages did not always focus on their husbands. As we saw earlier, Juana Palaçios confronted María de Maragon in Yébenes in 1612 for having entered her house and eaten with her husband, saying that Maragon ‘‘lied like a proven whore’’ and assaulting her.Ω∞ Women could blame the women who tempted, or gave into, their husbands as much as the men themselves for sexual misbehavior.Ω≤

honor and the golden age stage It is just these types of complications discussed in this chapter that are missing from the Golden Age stage. When playwrights chose adultery and homicide as the basis of their plots, they altered the meaning of those acts. Lope de Vega and Calderón singled out sexual infidelity from the whole range of family disputes, largely ignoring the relationship between the two sets of in-laws, the role of property and other economic issues, the proper behavior and treatment of women, and community involvement, all of which were such important parts of actual incidents of homicide and adultery. By removing the social context, while at the same time portraying an idealized honor code that was supposed to inform behavior, the playwright made it harder to understand the emphasis that the protagonist put on his reputation. It is easier to understand the honor language surrounding adultery when we realize that most of these cases incorporated issues of property, family relations, and community as well as sexual infidelity, issues that lent themselves to the rhetoric of honor even when adultery was not involved. The honor plays also omit the element of choice involved in violence and homicide. In the Duke of Ferrara’s soliloquies, Lope de Vega depicted

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honor as an inalterable code that demanded murderous vengeance for dishonor. But in the criminal records, wronged husbands and other people caught up in the destructive force of adultery demonstrated that they were in full command of their behavior. While some, such as the shopkeeper who immediately killed his wife and her lover when he discovered them having sex in the storeroom, seemed to act as though driven by passion, rage, or other forces outside of their control, others, such as the brothers-in-law who laid a trap for the man who had dishonored the woman who linked their families, or the pastry chef who may have poisoned his wife, bided their time and plotted. Others took no action, or at least did nothing until further incidents of misbehavior induced them to act violently against their wives. Others involved the justicia in attempts to calm the situation or bring wrongdoers into the hands of the criminal system, forgoing violent revenge. Still others tried ingenious solutions, like the stepsisters and their families who tried to rein in Sebastián Alonso by making him the godfather of his illegitimate children. In most of these cases the community at large was involved in the a√air, and in some of them women was clearly in command of their own fates and in command of the men as well, such as the anonymous Madrid woman with a husband in jail and a lover whom she had her friends attack and kill. In short, in cases involving adultery and violence, early modern Castilians had the same resources of the rhetoric of honor and rituals of the duel as they did in all their other conflicts. Adultery in early modern Castile, while probably not uncommon, was probably also not standard practice. Homicide was an extreme response, one not typically resorted to in violent confrontations over reputation and not necessarily resorted to even in cases of adultery, as the evidence from Yébenes demonstrates. The nobility, the social stratum from which the characters of the honor plays were drawn, represented a small segment of society. Choosing to portray murder and adultery among the aristocracy already made the honor plays exaggerated depictions of Castilian society. Removing adultery from the context of family disputes distorted the portrayal even further, as did portraying a rarified view of honor rather than depicting the more mundane concerns of reputation as it touched upon economic, social, and family issues. Taking adultery out of its social context served to magnify its importance and raise questions about reputation and gender relations, and this certainly allowed for detailed and

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lengthy expositions of the emotions that adultery might evoke, which suited the dramatists’ needs. Adultery and violence found their roots ultimately in the general themes of family conflict, which gave the audience an easily recognizable repertoire of issues and possible courses of action. This no doubt helps explain the popularity of these topics for both audiences and playwrights. But the stage presented a stylized, fantasy portrayal of adultery and violence, to say nothing of Castilian social practice in general. How Spanish was violence and wife murder prompted by adultery? Golden Age Castilians took care of adultery and other family conflict in much the same way they took care of other conflict, through the rhetoric of honor, which had counterparts in early modern Italy, northern Europe, and Latin America. So it is hard to believe that the ways in which Castilians responded to adultery, at least among the non-elite, was so very di√erent from the behavior of their non-Spanish contemporaries. When it comes to adultery and violence, the most striking aspect of Castilian culture was not anything that appeared in the criminal records but simply the honor plays themselves. The only evidence to suggest that Castile was an especially violent, misogynistic, honor-bound society were the plays of Lope de Vega and Calderón. The wife-murder plays seem to be sui generis, composed solely for dramatic e√ect and to fit into the tradition of the Golden Age stage, not because they bore any special relationship to reality among the spectators viewing the plays.

chapter 7

Conclusion

so far we have examined honor on the Golden Age stage, but now let’s take a look at another view, from Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote de la Mancha. Shortly after the mule drivers from Yanguas thrashed Don Quixote and Sancho Panza for allowing Don Quixote’s horse, Rocinante, to mingle with their own, Quixote explained, ‘‘I want you to know, Sancho, that the wounds given by whatever tools happen to be in one’s hands do not cause an a√ront, and this is expressly written in the law of the duel, that if the shoemaker hits another with the mold he is holding in his hand, even though it is wooden, one cannot say that he who has been struck has been cudgeled. I say this because you should not think that, just because we lie here pulverized from this brawl, we have been a√ronted, because the weapons that those men carried, with which they flattened us, were nothing more than their switches, and none of them, as I recall, held a rapier, sword, or dagger.’’∞ Thus did Quixote invoke the intricacies of dueling in order to safeguard his fantasy world, where he was an invincible knight, while managing to survive in the real world, where he was repeatedly unable to defend himself against any of his adversaries. Like the Knight of the Mournful Countenance, while writing this book I have often felt like I inhabited a landscape of phantoms, one where windmills become giants and flocks of sheep are mistaken for armies. There are two ghosts haunting this world, and they have stubbornly per-

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sisted despite the best e√orts of myself and others to dispel them. The first apparition is the anthropology of the Mediterranean, whose landmark studies from the 1950s and 1960s still keep a firm grasp on the imagination of today’s scholars in history and literature, continually reiterating the importance of honor in Mediterranean societies. The objections of anthropologists in the past two decades that the earlier generations of field workers exaggerated honor as they looked for a reason to di√erentiate southern Europe, in its ‘‘backwardness,’’ from the modern world of northern Europe and North America, have gone relatively unnoticed by people outside the field of anthropology. As the decades have passed, functionalism and structuralism have died away, anthropologists have devised new understandings of how actors shape and use the culture around them, and yet the idea persists that honor placed nonnegotiable demands on the behavior of premodern Spaniards.≤ The second ghost that haunts Spanish culture is the honor-play genre itself. No matter how thoroughly literary critics debunk the notion that the works of Lope de Vega and Calderón o√er accurate depictions of their contemporaries’ behavior, each new generation who reads the plays will leave with the impression of Golden Age Spain as a society crippled with anxiety over honor and its bloodthirsty demands. During the period when I was planning and researching this book, whenever I told fellow historians and literary scholars of early modern Spain that I was working on this topic, time and time again they gave me the friendly advice to look first for guidance at the anthropology of the Mediterranean or the honor plays. Nevertheless, Quixote gets it right—honor, and the punctilious rituals of the duel, were elements that one could use, if desirable, but also disregard, if unhelpful. Honor was not a rigid code. Rather it was a rhetoric, incorporating elements of the clandestine duel as practiced (or at least imagined) by aristocrats. Instead of locking participants into a code of behavior, honor o√ered tools to be picked up and used at the discretion of the user—insults, gestures, symbols such as hats and mustaches, and violence were all part of a loose but well-understood repertoire of moves and emblems that allowed early modern Castilians to pursue disputes over truth and reputation. The rhetoric of honor was a tool for managing relationships when problems occurred. Whenever a conflict occurred, choice and uncertainty reigned. People chose when to invoke honor and when not to, and people could wield the rhetoric of honor skillfully or

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poorly. This flexibility was visible even in the cases that best fit the stereotype of Spanish and Mediterranean honor: for example, the insults cuckold and whore appeared frequently, and the receivers of the insults sometimes disregarded them as empty. When María López called Pedro Martín a cuckold in Yébenes in 1628, he opted to question the seriousness of her insult, replying, ‘‘By whom?’’≥ If honor was not a code that prescribed a rigid standard of behavior, the rhetoric of honor was still important because it gave people a means to avoid or undo humiliation. Honor and shame were emotions, not just part of a cultural structure, and the a√ronts and rebuttals that the rhetoric of honor provided gave expression to those feelings.∂ Honor was a way to break free from the specific issue that caused humiliation and reorient the dispute toward a di√erent issue. If one has been asked to repay a debt and the money is not available, what should one do, especially if the request occurred in a public place where all one’s neighbors will know immediately that one cannot pay his or her debts? The rhetoric of honor provided several options. Deny that one owed a debt, as Diego Rodríguez did in Yébenes in 1612 when Juan Camacho asked him for thirty reales in the street, and the spectators’ attention would shift from ‘‘there is Diego Rodríguez who cannot pay his debts’’ to ‘‘there is Juan Camacho whom Diego Rodríguez just called a liar.’’∑ Arrive at a shop with butcher’s knives at the ready, as Jerónimo de Chaves did in Seville in 1633, and the spectators’ attention would shift from ‘‘there is Jerónimo de Chaves, whom a woman vendor has just denied a sale’’ to ‘‘Jerónimo de Chaves is a dangerous man who may violently threaten anyone who has a√ronted him.’’∏ Honor was a process of rhetoric, exchange, and bargaining, not a value structure that dictated the behavior and thinking of early modern Castilians. Through slander, truth telling, confrontation, and trust, individual men and women emerged as brokers of their own reputations and the reputations of their neighbors. Honor was important because it was practical; it was not a reified, sacred quality associated only with noblemen and -women.π Why did early modern Castilians choose to engage the rhetoric of honor at the times they did? Or put another way, what things were humiliating to them? It seems that being exposed as someone who was not meeting community obligations was the core of humiliation. People’s sense of themselves, their self-worth and pride, were molded on social

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models of moral virtues. Castilians possessed images of the ideal, honorable man and woman, which they articulated within the rhetoric of honor, but these ideals were somewhat misleading. Andrés Ruiz Calero articulated one version of the ideal man when he protested to the justicia of Yébenes in 1613, ‘‘I am a very honest man, a good Christian, fearful of God and of my conscience and not being accustomed to do such base things and . . . descending as I do from honorable parents and relatives and from a rich and prominent family.’’∫ Similarly, Pedro Garoz submitted a version of the ideal woman to the Yébenes justicia when he described his daughter in 1620 as ‘‘an honest woman, honorable and modest, a good Christian, upright, of good repute and morals.’’Ω These phrases were abstract and disconnected from the dilemmas that actually provoked violent conflict, however, and even more removed from the issues were the elite commentators’ visions of the perfect Christian gentleman and the perfectly chaste, enclosed woman. Examining the problems that actually led to confrontations, as recorded in the criminal records, shows that there were several components to the ideal man. Men liked to think of themselves as able to defend their family members, men as well as women. Maintaining a secure network of credit and debt and performing well in one’s calling or o≈ces were also an important part of being a good man, as was performing well in the teasing, competitive play that occurred among men. The ideal woman was able to maintain her sexual purity, but she also acted to protect her family, through violence or by using the law, and nurtured her credit and debt relationships. The criminal records captured the moments of crisis when a person’s self-conception was threatened because others challenged his or her adherence to these roles.∞≠ Calling someone a cuckold, a whore, a bad debtor, a poor craftsman, or a poor gambler served as an a√ront by publicly pointing out that person’s shortcomings in living up to community ideals. It might be impossible to distill these various issues into a single model of good behavior—the statements above have already oversimplified the myriad of problems that the rhetoric of honor handled— but the criminal records did display an accretion of small examples of how men and women should behave in the various problematic circumstances that might arise. The way that non-elite Castilians used the rhetoric of honor as a resource to help them in social interactions went largely unnoticed by elite commentators. The writers of dueling manuals, anti-dueling books,

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law books, confessor’s manuals, ascetic literature, and other conduct guides all o√ered somewhat di√erent interpretations of honor and gave di√erent prescriptions to (usually) combat it. But they all agreed that honor was an inflexible code that guided people’s actions, and that the honor code was antithetical to law, justice, and (at least for men) Christian morality. Dueling manuals portrayed the duel as a clear and unwavering set of moves whose course, once triggered by an a√ront, was nearly unstoppable. While there was some leeway that allowed duelists to try to reconcile, it too was part of a rigid etiquette. Anti-dueling writers agreed with this portrayal of the duel and countered the idea that honor depended on the opinion of others with the idea that true honor was based on Christian morality. Legal codes and jurists regarded dueling simply as assault and homicide and therefore illegal. Confessor’s manuals that focused on men also saw honor and the desire for vengeance as a force that worked on men from the outside: an irrational rage that propelled men to do evil. Like the honor plays and modern anthropology, all these writers portrayed honor as something beyond the individual’s control. Even the advice books for women, which embraced honor, encouraging enclosure and shame to ensure chastity and male control over women’s sexuality, saw it as an external code on which women should model their behavior. It is no wonder then that modern scholars have accepted the existence of a code of honor, determining the behavior of early modern Castilians, when all the elite commentators counseled the same thing. Another di√erence between honor as it was theorized and honor as it was used was that the plays, and most commentators too, focused on the individual, while in practice honor had much more to do with relationships between neighbors, which were put into jeopardy when one party failed to live up to community standards. Believing in the code of honor has led scholars to some misleading generalizations about Spanish culture. For one, there has been an overreliance on gender—important though it was—for predicting behavior. Of course, the rhetoric of honor recommended di√erent actions for men and women, but there were fewer di√erences than one would assume by relying on elite commentary. Women protected their families, and they also maintained credit and debt relationships. More important, the attempt to boil down the entirety of social interaction into one analytic model might be misguided. The sheer variety of behavior surrounding

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the disputes chronicled in the criminal records testifies to the di≈culty of incorporating them into a coherent code of conduct. Invoking terms such as honor, honra, reputación, fama, and the like was a rhetorical strategy that provided a unifying explanation for why people did what they did, but it served mostly to rectify specific problems that arose over a host of issues. Historians who have relied on honor to explain behavior in the early modern period have done so by surveying their subjects’ ex post facto justifications, making a coherent, logical system out of their findings and then using it to explain the causes for their behavior, taking at face value the reasons their subjects gave for their actions.∞∞ Scholars have also wrongly assumed there to be discrete ‘‘identities’’ into which Castilians could insert themselves and their neighbors in order to make sense of their social world. The points of contention disputed in violent confrontations unified the divisions in society that seemed to be most clear. Peasants and artisans understood and used the rhetoric as well as noblemen. Gypsies, sub-Saharan Africans, North Africans, and people of mixed race employed the rhetoric of honor, in Seville and Madrid or as slaves in the rural interior, as ably as the most purely Old Christian peasant in Old Castile.∞≤ Adultery, a crime with special ‘‘Spanish’’ overtones of honor and violent revenge in Golden Age literature, turns out to have been treated according to the same principles of reputation and confrontation as other disputes. In the criminal records, the concept of identity appears ill suited to be expressed as an abstract noun as historians use it today, to mean a fixed quality that simultaneously places individuals in society and gives them an understanding of self and of what is appropriate and inappropriate to do and to have done to them.∞≥ Instead, the idea makes better sense as a verb, describing how individuals ‘‘identify’’ their selves with one or more of the disparate social roles that they are called upon to play in di√erent circumstances. Through the process of violent conflict and the invocation of the rhetoric of honor, early modern Castilians identified themselves with characteristics that others had challenged—with their creditworthiness, for example, or their sexual propriety. They latched onto whatever identity seemed to best serve their purpose at the time.∞∂ This pattern of behavior was not limited strictly to Spain. Throughout this book, we have compared the practice of violence and the rhetoric of honor in Castile to that of other contemporary countries. That the culture of Latin America was similar is no surprise, but England, Italy, France,

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Germany, even Switzerland and the Netherlands all displayed like behavior too, in one way or another. Yet the debate about the significance of honor in Spain has taken vengeance and the honor code to be unique, or uniquely important, to Spain: either Spain’s status as a frontier society during the long centuries of warfare against Muslims in the south granted chivalry an unusually prominent place in Spanish culture, or the existence of converted Jews and Muslims made honor a stand-in for the vulnerability that Spanish men felt regarding limpeza de sangre and the sexual infidelity of women. Of course, we have little information about the practice of honor and dueling among the nobility, so it is possible that at that high social level there truly were important di√erences between Spain and its neighbors. For the non-elite, however, any di√erences that existed would have been di√erences in the frequency of violence, not in kind. Ironically, the most distinctive aspect of honor in Spain was the way that elite commentary imagined honor. For a century, scholars have tried to determine what was so special about Spanish society and culture that it could produce the honor plays of Lope and Calderón, but it turns out that the existence of the honor plays was itself the most significant di√erence between Spanish culture and the rest of Europe.

notes

chapter 1. introduction 1. ‘‘A peligro estáis, honor / no hay hora en vos que no sea / crítica; en vuestro sepulcro / vivís: puesto que os alienta / la mujer, en ella estáis / pisando siempre la güesa.’’ Calderón, El médico de su honra, lines 1659–64, p. 155. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 2. For an analysis of this play, see McKendrick, Theatre in Spain, 148–50. 3. C. A. Jones, ‘‘Spanish Honour as Historical Phenomenon, Convention and Artistic Motive.’’ For an example of modern critics who still view the plays this way, see McKendrick, ‘‘Honour/Vengeance in the Spanish ‘Comedia,’ ’’ and Losada Goya, L’honneur au théâtre. For an introduction to Lope de Vega and his work see Victor F. Dixon, ‘‘Lope Félix de Vega Carpio,’’ in Gies, Cambridge History of Spanish Literature, 251–64; and McKendrick, Theatre in Spain, 84–114. For an introduction to Calderón and his work see Evangelina Rodríguez Cuadros, ‘‘Pedro Calderón de la Barca,’’ in Gies, Cambridge History of Spanish Literature, 265–82; and McKendrick, Theatre in Spain, 140–77. 4. For an excellent summary of these issues, see Chauchadis, La loi du duel, 12– 19. 5. See Sánchez Albornoz, España, un enigma histórico; Domínguez Ortiz, Las clases privilegiadas; and Maravall, Poder, honor y elites en el siglo XVII. This view exists for honor in England too. James, ‘‘English Politics and the Concept of Honour.’’ 6. In a study of the early modern legal system, for example, Richard Kagan warned against taking criminal cases involving honor too seriously: ‘‘Cases involving libels and insults probably had less to do with any peculiar sense of personal honor (as many descriptions of Spanish national character would

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7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

notes to pages 4 – 6

have us believe) than with the rapid economic and social changes taking place.’’ Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile, 90–91. Castro, De la edad conflictiva, vol. 1, El drama de la honra en España y en su literatura; Castro, ‘‘Algunas observaciones acerca del concepto del honor’’; Van Beysterveldt, Répercussions du souci de la pureté de sang sur la conception de l’honneur dans la ‘Comedia Nueva’ espagnole; Wertheimer, Honor, Love, and Religion in the Theater before Lope de Vega. See especially McKendrick’s two articles, ‘‘Honour/Vengeance in the Spanish ‘Comedia’ ’’ and ‘‘Lope de Vega’s La Victoria de la honra and La Locura por la honra.’’ Bennassar, The Spanish Character, 213. For an overview of the development of the field of Mediterranean anthropology, see Gilmore, ‘‘Anthropology of the Mediterranean Area.’’ Jane Schneider posited an honor code based on sexual purity as the most important unifier in the culture of the Mediterranean, in Schneider, ‘‘Of Vigilance and Virgins.’’ This tradition stretches back at least as far as Peristiany, Honour and Shame. See especially Pitt-Rivers, ‘‘Honour and Social Status’’; Caro Baroja, ‘‘Honour and Shame’’; and Blok, Honour and Violence. See also Gilmore, Manhood in the Making; Gilmore, Aggression and Community; and Herzfeld, The Poetics of Manhood. For an excellent review of how historians have adopted the structuralist view of honor espoused by anthropologists, see E. Cohen, ‘‘Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome,’’ especially 597–601. Examples of historians who have already rejected structuralist models of honor can be found in T. Cohen, ‘‘Three Forms of Jeopardy’’; Dyer, ‘‘Seduction by Promise of Marriage’’; Poska, ‘‘Elusive Virtue’’; and Poska, Women and Authority, especially 1–9. See, for example, Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville, and Ruiz, Spanish Society. For a discussion of how anthropologists viewed ‘‘backward’’ popular culture in the Mediterranean as a continuation of behavior that was widely prevalent in premodern Mediterranean, and even northern European, society, see Amelang, ‘‘Mourning Becomes Eclectic,’’ and Herzfeld, Anthropology through the Looking-Glass. The honor code model has become so influential that even historians outside the Mediterranean have come to see honor and shame as a key component of not just the Mediterranean but all premodern European societies. Some examples include Ru√, Violence in Early Modern Europe, 75–83, and Egmond and Mason, The Mammoth and the Mouse, 43–66. For dueling and fencing manuals, see Chauchadis, La loi du duel; for Olivares’s proposals, see ibid., 210–12. For criticism, see Herzfeld, Anthropology through the Looking-Glass; PinaCabral, ‘‘The Mediterranean as a Category of Regional Comparison’’; and Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments. One way to use anthropology to illuminate history without simply taking static continuity for granted is o√ered by Ame-

notes to pages 6 – 10

15. 16.

17. 18.

19.

20.

21.

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lang, ‘‘Mourning Becomes Eclectic.’’ For a defense against these attacks, see Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea. Campbell, Monarchy, Political Culture, and Drama in Seventeenth-Century Madrid. Matthew Stroud has demonstrated that the wife-murder plays developed on the stage as a response to trends within the history of Spanish drama. These plots were a convenient way to combine several di√erent popular components of Golden Age plots, including ‘‘that of the errant wife who must be punished, that of the tyrannical or neglectful husband who victimizes his wife, that of the bad arranged marriage, and that of the unfortunate marital conflict which can be fairly ascribed to forces beyond the control of the individuals.’’ Stroud, Fatal Union, 141–42. See also Bermejo Cabrero, ‘‘Justicia penal y teatro barroco,’’ and Jones, ‘‘Honor in Spanish Golden Age Drama.’’ I draw on the observations of Ong, Orality and Literacy; Havelock, The Greek Concept of Justice; and Sabean, Power in the Blood. Regarding honor in Italy, Thomas V. Cohen stated that ‘‘honor is often best understood not as a code, a quality, or an intangible commodity, though it has aspects of all three, but rather rhetorical process, one of several ploys for credit in a skeptical, dangerous world.’’ T. Cohen, ‘‘Three Forms of Jeopardy,’’ 987. The criminal records alternately describe Yébenes as a villa, or town, and as a lugar, or village. As part of the Montes de Toledo, Yébenes had an unusual position among the municipalities of Castile and shared characteristics of both types of settlement. Unlike a village, Yébenes de Toledo constituted its own jurisdictional unit and was not subject to the government of a nearby larger town. Most towns were under the lordship of the king, the church, or a nobleman and enjoyed broad autonomy over their own a√airs; not so in Yébenes, where the city of Toledo held the ultimate say over its judicial and executive decisions. Despite the compromised nature of its local government, I will refer to Yébenes as a town, not a village, because of its semiurban nature and legal status. For an explanation of the di√erences between village and towns and the unique status of the Montes de Toledo, see Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain, xv–xvi, 1–9, 13. For a discussion of the jurisdiction of the Order of San Juan, see Moxó, Los antiguos señoríos de Toledo, 123–29, and see also the map of the di√erent jurisdictions in La Mancha in Phillips, Ciudad Real, 10. These figures are taken from tax records as listed in Sánchez González, Historia de los Yébenes, 55–56. The tax records counted vecinos, or tax-paying citizens of the town. James Casey states that demographic historians currently believe that each vecino recorded in these documents represents a total of four people. Casey, Early Modern Spain, 21. The tax record of 1663 actually lists many more people in Yébenes de San Juan than Yébenes de Toledo, but Sánchez González dismisses this as a mistake because all the other evidence collected for the two barrios suggests otherwise and because the figure of eight hundred vecinos is almost twice as much as the 1590 figure, even though the seventeenth century was a period of population decline for all of

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22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

33. 34. 35.

notes to pages 10 – 15

rural Castile. Today the two jurisdictions are combined into one municipality, called Los Yébenes, the plural form of Yébenes. Sánchez González, Historia de los Yébenes, 24. Ibid., 42–104. Ibid., 88. Ibid., 105–36, and Weisser, The Peasants of the Montes, 46–47, 97. Sánchez González, Historia de los Yébenes, 189–215. Richard Kagan, for one, pointed out that the idea that the Montes was a backward area is incorrect. Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, 81. Sánchez González, Historia de los Yébenes, 137–43. Weisser, ‘‘Crime and Subsistence,’’ 103–105. Ibid., 99–102. José Luis de las Heras Santo estimates that 90 percent of all the crimes pardoned were homicides. Heras Santo, ‘‘Indultos concedidos por la Cámara de Castilla en tiempos de los Austria.’’ Although the figures for homicide in the Good Friday Pardons alone were less than that, the great majority of the crimes were indeed violent assaults or rape. None of the pardons chosen came from later than 1650, although some were included in a legajo, or file, that includes cases from 1651 and 1652. Some were taken from the Archivo General de Simancas, others from the Archivo Histórico Nacional. For pardons in France, see Davis, Fiction in the Archives. Castan, Honnêteté et relations sociales, 500–519. Neither the pardons nor the cases from Yébenes were chosen at random in a statistically meaningful sense. At the Archivo Municipal de Toledo, the exigencies of limited time and resources influenced my approach for selecting cases for study. I examined 313 of the 550 cases (57 percent) from 1600 to 1650 that seemed at a cursory reading to involve violent dispute. Here is a table showing the results, giving the number of cases examined, the number of cases that seemed to involve violent crime (including those cases used in this study and those left out), and the total number of all criminal cases in the archive, including violent and nonviolent crime such as theft.

Decade

Criminal cases examined

Total criminal cases involving violence

Total surviving criminal cases

1601–10 1611–20 1621–30 1631–40 1641–50 Total: 1600–1650

37 123 101 38 14 313

49 149 146 147 59 550

133 364 240 203 90 1,030

notes to pages 17 – 19

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Clearly, the sample is distorted in two di√erent ways. First, some decades have many more cases selected than others, which was unavoidable because some decades have many more total criminal cases than others. The period 1611–20 accounts for 35 percent of the total criminal cases available, while 1641–50 accounts for only 9 percent. Second, the percentage of the amount of cases read compared to the total criminal cases involving violence available di√ers for each decade. In 1611–20, 83 percent of the total criminal cases involving violence were examined, while in 1641–50 only 24 percent were. Furthermore, as time and money grew short, I began to ignore the most common and least interesting cases, such as brief fights between young men that resulted in little injury and seemed to arise for inconsequential reasons, and focused instead on unusual cases such as those involving women and longer cases that included more detailed and interesting information. No attempt was made to collect the Good Friday Pardons according to statistically meaningful randomness. These pardons represented such unusual cases anyway, depending as they did on having a good excuse for the violent behavior of the accused or good connections with the royal court, and were so limited in number that they could not be shown to represent any wider trends in Castilian crime. Instead, each pardon chosen for this book was selected for one of two reasons. The first was to provide the types of cases that were rare in the Yébenes records, such as cases involving women, with the goal of simply having more evidence from which to draw conclusions. The second was to provide examples of those incidents that were absent altogether from the Yébenes records, such as cases involving noblemen and their servants. chapter 2. the duel and the rhetoric of honor 1. Calderón de la Barca, El postrer duelo de España, 3–13. 2. ‘‘En causas de honor es llano / que solo un testigo sobra.’’ Ibid., act II, lines 1252–53, p. 161. 3. ‘‘Vuestra obligación sabéis.’’ Ibid., act II, line 1263. ‘‘Hasta miraros / Don Pedro, o vengado or muerto.’’ Ibid., act II, lines 1280–81, p. 162. 4. ‘‘Juráis de que no es venganza / la que retador os mueve, / por odio, rancor o saña, / a esta lid, sino por solo / manteneros en la fama / de honrada opinion?’’ Ibid., act III, lines 1100–1104, p. 198. 5. Ibid., act III, line 1322, p. 206. 6. As Donald R. Larson put it, ‘‘If anything is clear in Golden Age discussions of honor, it is that a man simply must, no matter what his inner inclination, avenge an insult to his reputation.’’ Larson, The Honor Plays of Lope de Vega, 12–13. Other salient works on the theme of honor on the Golden Age stage include Honig, Calderón and the Seizures of Honor; Yarbro-Bejarano, Feminism and the Honor Plays of Lope de Vega; and McKendrick, Identities in Crisis. 7. ‘‘¡Ay, honor, fiero enemigo!’’; ‘‘bárbaro legislador.’’ Lope de Vega, El castigo sin venganza, act III, lines 2811 and 2818, p. 114.

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notes to pages 19 – 23

8. ‘‘El legislador tirano.’’ Calderón, El pintor de su deshonra, act III, line 490, p. 214. 9. All of the criminal cases from Yébenes are taken from the Archivo Municipal de Toledo: Causas Criminales. The cases are grouped by legajos according to the year in which they were filed, but within each legajo there is no coherent indexing system. I have used the heading written by contemporary scribes to indicate each case cited. The headings usually included the name of the accused and sometimes a brief reference to the o√ense, such as herida, or ‘‘wound.’’ When these headings are lacking, I have indicated the case by its first line. This case is Archivo Municipal de Toledo: Causas Criminales, Yébenes legajo 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerella] eug[eni]o perez franc[isc]o gomez.’’ Querella, meaning ‘‘complaint’’ or ‘‘accusation,’’ begins many of the headings. (Hereafter, cases from this archive will be abbreviated as, e.g., AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19.) 10. The one governmental organ that would have handled many dueling cases was the o≈ce of the Alcaldes de Casa y Corte. These royal o≈cials kept order around the court and city of Madrid where noblemen congregated and fought, but few records survive from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See Alloza, La vara quebrada de la justicia. 11. Historians of nineteenth-century Europe have studied the formal duel as a gateway to exploring larger issues in the cultural history of the bourgeoisie. For examples, see Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France, and Frevert, Men of Honour. 12. For the evolution of medieval forms of challenge and judicial duel into the early modern private duel, see Chauchadis, La loi du duel, 46–68. 13. Calderón, El postrer duelo de España, 12–13. 14. For the origins of the clandestine duel in Italy, see Muir, Mad Blood Stirring. 15. ‘‘Por ley inviolable tienen los cavalleros del mundo, el no aver sufrir descortesia, ni lo que ellos llaman afrenta, como es qualquiera palabra injuriosa, y señaladamente la desmentida, o qualquiera obra descomedida, y que destas cosas se ha de tomar cumplida satisfacion con la vengança, hasta quitar la vida al ofensor, en los casos que ellos señalan, o perderla en defensa de la honra que pretendieron averles quitado, y que esto se ha de hazer por combate particular, quando de otra manera no se huviesse satisfecho, por los caminos, y reglas que para esto dizen ay señalados por soldados, y capitanes muy graves.’’ Artal de Alagón, Concordia de las leyes divinas y humanas, fol. 107r. For a summary of Artal de Alagón’s life and ideas, see Chauchadis, La loi du duel, 258–59. 16. ‘‘Pues los antiguos las trataron, y dexaron escritas.’’ Artal de Alagón, Concordia de las leyes divinas y humanas, fol. 107r. 17. ‘‘Antojo y temeridad.’’ Ibid., fol. 110r–v. 18. See especially McKendrick, ‘‘Honour/Vengeance in the Spanish ‘Comedia.’ ’’ 19. The discussion of these men’s works that follows draws heavily on Chauchadis, La loi du duel, 37–39, 107–26.

notes to pages 23 – 29

239

20. For more on Diego de Valera, see ibid., 55–57. 21. Ibid., 99–103. 22. ‘‘Hidalgo o cavallero o soldado.’’ Villasante, Tractatus del duello, fol. Kiii(r)– Kiv(v). 23. Paris de Puteo, Libro llamado batalla de dos, fol. i(v). 24. Ibid., fol. xiii(r)–xviiii(v). 25. Villasante, Tractatus del duello, fol. Lii(r)–Liii(v). 26. ‘‘Vana fama.’’ Paris de Puteo, Libro llamado batalla de dos, fol. xxiii(v)–xxix(r). 27. ‘‘Finge que quien te desafio te dixo ladron del cauallo de Sempronio, o ruffian de tu propria muger, o sembrador de false moneda, si tu no sabes ser el cauallo de Sempronio, y lo possees justamente, si tienes a tu muger por casta y honesta, sino sabes ser falsa la moneda: sin duda eres injustamente desafiado.’’ Alciato, De la manera de desafio, fol. 33v–34r. 28. Paris de Puteo, Libro llamado batalla de dos, fol. lxxvii. 29. ‘‘Yo me remito al que mas mejor razon puede alegar.’’ Ibid., fol. xliiii(r). For the entire section on possible outcomes, see fol. xliii(v)–lxxvii(v). 30. French writers, supposedly against dueling, su√ered from the same weakness. Carroll, Blood and Violence, 24–28. 31. ‘‘No pueda un hidalgo como yo volver libremente, por su honra, con la espada en la mano.’’ Urrea, Diálogo de la verdadera honra militar, 42. 32. Chauchadis, La loi du duel, 251–57. 33. Ibid., 167–71. 34. Lozano de Ibdes, Destierro y azote del libro del duelo, 23–72. 35. ‘‘Manera que uno deve matarse con otro.’’ Alciato, De la manera de desafio, fol. Aiv(v)–Av(r). 36. ‘‘A matarse en cortesía / vinieron a aquesta estancia / . . . cochilladas / se tiraron tan bien puestas / en razón y tan honradas, / que debieron de servir / al Cid en algunas calzas.’’ Calderón, El postrer duelo, act II, lines 789–796, and note by Guy Rosetti, p. 147. 37. Carranza, Libro de Hieronimo de Carança natural de Sevilla, que trata de la philosophia de las armas, y de su destreza y de la aggressión y defension cristiana. For more on his life and philosophy, see Chauchadis, La loi du duel, 259–60. 38. ‘‘Yo no pretendo condenar todo los combates particulares, ni dessanimar a los hombres a conservar su honra, y a no responder y bolver por la de Dios, y por la propria, de la manera que se deve, y en los casos en que es licito el hazerlo . . . que sobre no perderla, es bien perder la vida, si de otra manera no se puede defender, que con esto se conservara la propria honra.’’ Artal de Alagón, Concordia de las leyes divinas y humanas, fol. 126r–v. 39. The consensus among commentators is that the number of duels declined throughout the sixteenth century and returned to popularity among the elite from around 1620 through the rest of the seventeenth century. Chauchadis, La loi du duel, 395–401. 40. ‘‘Afectacion de valor’’; ‘‘flaqueça de animo.’’ ‘‘Discurso en orden a reformar la ley del Duelo,’’ fol. 272v–273r. It is possible that this was actually written by

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41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52.

53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60.

notes to pages 29 – 35

Olivares himself, but it was signed on June 20, 1638, by Francisco de Pareja and on July 16, 1638, by Geronymo de Guevara and Don Juan de Echalaz. For more on this idea, see Chauchadis, La loi du duel, 198–200. Urrea, Diálogo de la verdadera honra militar, 53, 81–82. ‘‘Yo nunca me desdeciría de lo que una vez hubiera dicho, aunque lo dicho fuera falso y contra toda razón.’’ Ibid., 87–88. Ibid., 88. Ibid., 88–110. Chauchadis, La loi du duel, 103, 106–8. Paris de Puteo, Libro llamado batalla de Dos. Ibid., 27–40. See, for example, Alciato, De la manera de desafio, fol. 23v–24r. Valera, Tratado de los rieptos y desafios. ‘‘Vil y ruinmente’’; ‘‘porque por la vía del duelo no se puede llegar a la combate sin que precedan primero muchas palabras, para determinar y declarar la causa y pretensiones, y para determinar quién es actor o reo. De otra manera sería un combate bárbaro y sin orden.’’ Urrea, Diálogo de la verdadera honra militar, 59–62. For more on the proposed duel see Chauchadis, La loi du duel, 59–66; Tyler, The Emperor Charles the Fifth, 55–58; Fernández Alvarez, Charles V, 78; and Maltby, The Reign of Charles V, 35–38. Maltby believes that Charles, at least, was earnest in his desire for single combat. See Weinstein, ‘‘Fighting or Flyting?’’ ‘‘Deziendo pedro o iuan vos a veys dicho esto o esto o hezistes tal cosa yo endiendo de defender mi fama y honrra como meior podiere y deviere vos a veys hecho mal o no aveys dicho verdad enlo que dexistes y mentistes y mentis y mentireys tantas quantas vezes lo dixistes dezis y direys y si vos no provays ser la verdad ome lo demandays quedareys por mal cavallero o soldado.’’ Villasante, Tractatus del duello, fol. Liv(v)–M(r). Chauchadis points out that violence in criminal records roughly follows the pattern of the duel. Chauchadis, La loi du duel, 451–56. For a more detailed discussion of the value of legal testimony regardless of its objective truth, see Davis, Fiction in the Archives. These problems will be examined more fully in chapter 3. Pieter Spierenburg and John M. Beattie use the term popular duel to signify a fight among low-status people that resembles the form and meaning of formal duels among the elite. Spierenburg, ‘‘Introduction’’; Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England. For more on this phenomenon in Spain, see Mantecón, ‘‘Lances de cuchilladas.’’ Nieto, ‘‘le obligo a que este d[eclarant]e a que tuviese quistion con el.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerella] juan nieto.’’ Indeed, Stuart Carroll has found that in France calling a brawl ‘‘a duel’’ could often be a way, at best, to impose structure on confusing events and, at worst, to disguise murder. Carroll, Blood and Violence, 130–52.

notes to pages 35 – 39

241

61. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerell]a eug[eni]o perez oliva.’’ 62. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerell]a di[eg]o bermexo—p[edr]o bermexo.’’ 63. ‘‘Baya senora mala la borrachona.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘q[uerell]a que dio ju[an] de ortega.’’ 64. ‘‘Trez o doze hurtos.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1609–10, ‘‘infor[maci]on de o≈[ci]o q[uere]lla ju[an] perez.’’ 65. ‘‘Ynfame suçio’’; ‘‘avia sido ymaxinacion suya.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1625–27, ‘‘q[uerell]a garci sanchez.’’ 66. ‘‘Soi hijos de buenos.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘ynf[ormaci]on o q[uerell]a lucas garcia xiemenz yevenes.’’ 67. ‘‘Me dijo muchas palabras ynjuriosas contra mi buena reputaçion y fama . . . todo lo qual dixo con animo de quitarme mi onrra y por sser como soy onbre onrrado buen [Christ]iano temerosso de dios y de mi conçiencia y no a costumbrado a hacer semejantes bajeças y sser mançebo y esta al pique de tomar estado y decender como deçiendo de onrrados deudos y parientes ricos y prinçipales.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘q[uerell]a ysavel çid.’’ 68. Bermejo accused her of having said, ‘‘Era un rico abariento y que me comia a los pobres,’’ which was ‘‘todo con animo de nos quitar y manchar n[uestr]a buena bida rreputacion y fama por ser como somos jente onrrada ricos e principales y que antes usamos de caridad en neçesidades de pobres.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] bermexo.’’ 69. ‘‘Palabras feas y enjuriosas agenas de my calidad.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerella] pablos lopez zujano—ju[an] f[ernand]ez—ju[an] de quinones.’’ 70. ‘‘Mi marido es mas honbre de bien que bos y mas honrado,’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘de gaspar rodriguez contra ju[an] nieto carretero y mateo su hijo.’’ Incidentally, while modern linguists and anthropologist have sometimes teased out nuances of meaning between the Spanish words honor and honra, there seems to have been no di√erence between them during the Golden Age. In fact, in the entry for honor in his dictionary, Covarrubias explains, ‘‘Means the same thing as honra.’’ Covarrubias, Tesoro, 696. Furthermore, in the testimony recorded in the criminal records used here, Castilians tended to eschew both words in favor of the adjective honrado, as Camacha does here. 71. Covarrubias, Tesoro, 1,000. 72. Alexandra Shepard finds this to be true in early modern England as well. Shepard, Meanings of Manhood, 157. 73. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1609–10, ‘‘ynfor[maci]on de o≈[ci]o q[uere]lla ju[an] perez.’’ 74. Juan and Francisco de Balboa accused Gabriel Ruiz of calling them ‘‘picaros ladrones.’’ A witness claimed that Francisco de Balboa responded, ‘‘Tu eres el picaro ladron que si fueras a la carçel real de t[ole]do bieramos como salias.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘q[uerell]a gabriel ruiz.’’ 75. Bartolomé Barba accused Mateo Pérez of calling him a thief, and another witness states that she heard Pérez say, ‘‘Es onbre testigo falso.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘q[uerella] mateo perez querella lorente lopez.’’

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notes to pages 39 – 42

76. See Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants. 77. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘q[uerell]a catalina her[nand]ez.’’ 78. ‘‘Un bellaco picaro judio’’; ‘‘es onbre onrado buen cristiano y hixo de padres’’; ‘‘los cristianos biexos limpios de toda raça de moros ni judios.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerell]a ynes diaz.’’ 79. ‘‘Le llamo de morisco hijo de una morisca y se lo probaria.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘criminal q[uerell]a desteban paninas v[ecin]o de yevenes contra al[ons]o de abila v[ecin]o de la d[ic]ha billa.’’ 80. In Latin America the term mestiza was typically meant to designate someone of mixed heritage, both Iberian and Native American. It is unclear whether Francisco Esteban intended this specific meaning or whether he meant something less precise, akin to the English term mongrel. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerell]a fran[cis]co esteban.’’ 81. ‘‘Hijo de un negro de aquellos de granada.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘querella de fran[cis]co de la cruz.’’ 82. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerella] francisco ruyz pañinas.’’ 83. Laura Gowing explains that in early modern London, being a ‘‘whore’’ did not necessarily imply the exchange of money but rather the consumption of material and emotional resources that a woman received from a man with whom she had an extramarital a√air. The term whore was most often used by one woman against another whom she suspected of being her husband’s mistress, thus taking material and emotional resources away from the first woman and her family. Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 90–94. 84. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘antonio fer[nand]ez q[uerell]a la guzmana.’’ 85. Covarrubias, Tesoro, 256–57. 86. For a classic example, see Pitt-Rivers, ‘‘Honour and Social Status.’’ 87. The scenario they described has María López saying that ‘‘hera un bellaco cornudo’’ and Pedro Martín responding ‘‘Y de quien,’’ to which she replied, ‘‘Bel zapatero de biejo que tiene en tu cassa.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘p[edro] m[arti]nyuez molinero q[uerell]a m[ari]a lopez muger de al[ons]o blas.’’ 88. ‘‘Aunque es verdad que pudiera caussar escandalo’’; ‘‘no le causso por sser una muger deshonarada mal díciente’’; ‘‘muger honrrada . . . de buena bida y costumbres.’’ Ibid. 89. De la Cruz denied having done so when interrogated by o≈cials of the fiel del juzgado. Incidentally, the witness was identified as ‘‘Polonia, daughter of La Guzmana.’’ ‘‘La Guzmana’’ was involved in another confrontation above. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] de la cruz.’’ 90. Anaya Majano said Cid spoke ‘‘por los ynjuriar e ynfamar.’’ Cid claimed ‘‘que se dezia en el lugar y era publico,’’ especially by Francisco López de Ruedas, vecino of Yébenes. The witness is recorded to have said that Cid said the words ‘‘sencillamente sin pasion ninguna y no con animo de o√ender’’ Anaya Majano and his wife. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘joan anaya q[uerell]a el li[cencia]do ju[an] cid.’’

notes to pages 42 – 46

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91. ‘‘No sabe lo ques el ofi[ci]o de zapatero pues no da por el cordoban mas de doce reales.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614–15, ‘‘de o≈[ci]o contra p[edr]o loçano capatero.’’ 92. ‘‘No es racon ni es bien hecho e yo dare esta dello a el s[eño]r fiel del juzgado y porque no es justa lo q[ue] v[uestra] m[erce]d haçe.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614– 15, ‘‘q[uerell]a los alcaldes y otros v[ecino]s de yevenes p[edr]o lopez.’’ 93. ‘‘Bellaco ladron infame judío hijo de otro.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerella] pablos lopez zujano—ju[an] f[ernand]ez—ju[an] de quinones.’’ 94. One location today for the Good Friday Pardons (Indultos de Viernes Santo) is the Archivo General de Simancas, filed as Archivo General de Simancas: Consejos, Camara de Castilla: Causas Criminales, by legajo number. This pardon is found in legajo 2558, number 4. (Hereafter, cases from this archive will be abbreviated as, e.g., AGS: CC, leg. 2558, no. 4.) 95. Martín López is reported to have said, ‘‘Que daba al diablo la baca y al dueño y duenña y toda su casta.’’ Francisco Sánchez is reported to have said, ‘‘Beni aca por que no soys comedido a mi hermana.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2559, no. 9. 96. ‘‘Le avia decruzar la cara y cortar las orejas.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘caveza del processo—alonso cordoves—el licen[cia]do ju[an] cid.’’ 97. ‘‘Sal aca gallina para que te encierras.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘de gaspar rodriguez contra ju[an] nieto carretero y mateo su hijo.’’ 98. ‘‘Si como es mug[e]r fuera honbre que le abia dedar de bofetones.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘querella q[ue] dio andres de ortega de ju[an] myngo y cat[alin]a g[arci]a su mug[e]r.’’ 99. ‘‘Todo contra el onor.’’ Ibid. 100. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerella] eug[eni]o perez franc[isc]o gomez.’’ 101. Thomas V. Cohen has described a similar typology of gestures dealing with honor and the symbols of personal honor, including special parts of the body such as the face, head, and hands. He calls this system of honor and a√ront as it is written out on the physical embodiment of one’s self the ‘‘liturgy of affront.’’ T. Cohen, ‘‘The Lay Liturgy of A√ront in Sixteenth-Century Italy.’’ For a similar list of o√ensive gestures in Spain, see Mantecón, ‘‘Lances de cuchilladas.’’ 102. ‘‘Le arancana un bisgote.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerella] p[edr]o garcia de la comadre juan bap[tis]ta ju[an] ruyz.’’ For beard pulling in France, see Carroll, Blood and Violence, 94. See also Groebner, Defaced. 103. Villareal apologized immediately afterward, saying he was only ‘‘burlando’’ (joking or teasing) with his young friends, an excuse Rubio Herrero accepted when he pardoned him. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] de villareall y otros 1627.’’ 104. ‘‘Ruyn muger y questa amanzebada con un biolin.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627– 28, ‘‘q[uerella] maria lopez 1627.’’ 105. Elizabeth S. Cohen first discovered the shaming ritual that she labeled ‘‘house-scorning’’ in her research in Rome. She identifies it as a ‘‘complex of behavior described frequently in the records of the criminal courts’’ or a

244

106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111.

112. 113.

114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122.

123.

124. 125. 126.

notes to pages 47 – 52

‘‘group of actions and gestures’’ recognized as a coherent symbol of scorn. E. Cohen, ‘‘Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerell]a di[eg]o martin de las mendio—un hijo de al[ons]o barva de gaspar.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘q[uerella] fran[cis]co cid.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘de gaspar rodriguez contra ju[an] nieto carretero y mateo su hijo.’’ ‘‘Able bien.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1635–36.2, ‘‘de ofi[ci]o di[eg]o de balboa.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘p[edro] m[arti]nyuez molinero q[uerell]a m[ari]a lopez muger de al[ons]o blas.’’ Two of the boys charged were fifteen and seventeen years old, and one of the women mentioned was twenty-two. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘causa pellezcos q[uerell]a ju[an] diaz p[edr]o de madrid.’’ The items of clothing were called ‘‘mandil’’ and ‘‘montera.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1622–23, ‘‘q[uerell]a anton esclavo del m[aestr]o parraga.’’ Estupro was the word used to describe rape in the criminal records, although one case that seems clearly to be attempted rape does not have any explicitly sexual language, since the woman was able to fight o√ her assailant. This subject will be treated at length in chapter 6. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘de gaspar rodriguez contra ju[an] nieto carretero y mateo su hijo.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘q[uerell]a gabriel garçia.’’ The crutch was called a ‘‘muleta.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerella] alonso marin.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘querella ju[an] m[arti]n guerrero c[ontr]a gabriel gomez.’’ Again, this corresponds to what Thomas V. Cohen has found in early modern Rome. T. Cohen, ‘‘The Lay Liturgy of A√ront in Sixteenth-Century Italy.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2568, no. 37. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerella] eug[eni]o perez franc[isc]o gomez.’’ ‘‘Valgale el diablo no ay calle harta.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1608–09, ‘‘q[uerell]a fran[cis]co corral sacristan.’’ The failure to investigate or record the context and background details of crimes is typical of the judicial process throughout early modern Europe. Dean and Lowe, ‘‘Introduction,’’ 4–5. ‘‘Sin caussa q[ue] le diesse ni sin dezielle nada le dio de moxicones en el rostro.’’ After witnesses stopped the fight, Gómez allegedly retaliated by stabbing Serrano in the chest with a penknife. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614–15, ‘‘caveça de proçeso—j[ua]n serrano y fran[cis]co gomez.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614–15, ‘‘sobre la herida de morales.’’ It seems that earlier Ruiz would not let Antón join in a game of dice. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerell]a 1627 anton esclabo de maestro parraga.’’ Prieta, ‘‘bellaco ladron a quentrais bos en mi aposento ydos nora mala que yo soy muger honrrada que si tomo esta espada os dejare ay apuñalados.’’ Gil,

notes to pages 53 – 56

127. 128. 129. 130.

131.

132. 133.

134. 135. 136. 137.

138.

139. 140.

141.

245

‘‘perdone señora maria prieta que no quisiera aberlo hecho.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘al[ons]o xill.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerella] eug[eni]o perez franc[isc]o gomez.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘caveça de proçeso—martin f[ernand]ez y fr[ancis]co ximenez.’’ ‘‘Desgracia.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘1634—en 7 de junio año 1634— domingo horgeta v[e]c[in]o deste lugar como mejor aya . . .’’ Majero argued that he spoke with ‘‘cortesia’’ and ‘‘respeto.’’ The fiel del juzgado found against him, fining him 1,000 maravedís and ordering him to act more reservedly toward the alcaldes. Majero said, ‘‘S[eñ]or alc[al]de no era abonado yo para trezientos reales pues mas hazienda tengo yo que v[uestra] m[erce]d trujo al lug[a]r si mis padres fueran bibos no enpuñara v[uestra] m[erce]d la bara.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerella] b[a]r[tolo]me ximenez maxaro.’’ ‘‘Vale reverencia, cortesía que se haze a la virtud, a la potestad.’’ Covarrubias, Tesoro, 697. Indeed, one can say that all a√ronts were simply the flip side of the standards of etiquette, and any breach in courtesy could be taken as an affront. Carroll, Blood and Violence, 49–87. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘q[uerella] mateo perez querella lorente lopez.’’ Carpio Anaya and Esteban Pañinas were the aggrieved parties in the above examples. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘q[uerell]a sebastian de sevilla’’; AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘criminal q[uerell]a desteban paninas v[ecin]o de yevenes contra al(ons)o de abila v[ecin]o de la d[ic]ha billa.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘p[edro] m[arti]nyuez molinero q[uerell]a m[ari]a lopez muger de al[ons]o blas.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘al[ons]o xill.’’ ‘‘Moço muy conpuesto no acasionado a pesadunbrelo.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerella] alonso marin.’’ Carpio claimed that Juan Ximénez said, ‘‘Si os quisiera matar bien pudiera.’’ When questioned, Juan Ximénez claimed he had been given permission to leave and eat at a friend’s house, and he had merely used his dagger to free himself. Bartolomé Ximénez denied ever having attacked Carpio with a sword. AMT: CC, Y 1614, ‘‘de o≈[ci]o q[uerella] ju[an] ximenez b[a]r[tolo]me ximenez.’’ Loçano is alleged to have said, ‘‘El es un vujarron y si es honbre adonde quisiere y como quisiere le aguardo.’’ Durango, ‘‘yo no quero renir bayase con dios.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614–15, ‘‘de o≈[ci]o contra p[edr]o loçano capatero.’’ ‘‘Se fuese con dios.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerell]a p[edr]o vermejo y tome ruyz.’’ Mateo Pérez Oliva, ‘‘hace por bellacos y no por el.’’ Bartolomé Ximénez, ‘‘pues quien son los bellacos.’’ Mateo Perez Oliva, ‘‘el es el primero.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘de o≈[ci]o q[uerell]a b[a]r[tolo]me ximenez.’’ Bystanders pulled them apart before they could fight. Martín Guerrero called

246

142. 143. 144.

145. 146. 147.

148. 149.

150.

151.

152. 153. 154. 155. 156.

157. 158. 159.

notes to pages 57 – 61

the alcabala collector as a witness on his behalf during the criminal investigation. Gabriel Gómez, ‘‘no estaba bien repartido q[ue] le avian cargado muchas mas cantidad de lo q[ua]l devia.’’ Juan Martín Guerrero, ‘‘qualquiera q[ue] dixese que esta mal repartido mentia.’’ Gabriel Gómez, ‘‘mas miente el y soy tan bueno como el.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘querella ju[an] m[arti]n guerrero q[uerell]a gabriel gomez.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘criminal q[uerell]a marcos de la torre.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerella] eug[eni]o perez franc[isc]o gomez.’’ ‘‘Los metieron en paz.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerella] eug[eni]o perez franc[isc]o gomez’’; AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘querella ju[an] m[arti]n guerrero q[uerell]a gabriel gomez.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerella] eug[eni]o perez franc[isc]o gomez.’’ ‘‘Hijo de un berdugo.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘q[uerell]a luis criado de ju[an] bautista.’’ An ‘‘escopeta’’ is what Peña spied Martín de Sandobal carrying. Martín de Sandobal, ‘‘dejeme v[uestra] m[erce]d q[ue] yo no baya ninguna cosa.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] m[arti]n de sandobal.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘causa criminal contra luis garçia.’’ Cid called the object with which she was beaten ‘‘una arma’’ and said she could not determine what it was. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerella] maria rodriguez herida.’’ ‘‘Si se lo avia d[ic]ho una bez se lo dezia otras tres y q[ue] otras tres se lo dezia otras trezientos y se bolvia a ratificar en ello.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘q[uerell]a luis criado de ju[an] bautista.’’ Pérez ‘‘procuro metellos en paz y tomo la mano de amigos’’ but heard that Miguel was ‘‘no guardando el [sic] amystad,’’ so Pérez went again ‘‘para verlos hecho amygas.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘juan miguel fran[cis]co miguel eug[eni]o diaz.’’ ‘‘Graviel las rrabones que anoche se dijeron no fueron bien dichas.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1625–27, ‘‘de ofi[ci]o de just[ici]a q[uerell]a ju[an] ballesteros.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘fran[cis]co lopez pedro lopez ju[an] serrano mateo garoz di[eg]o m[arti]n redrojo.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘ju[an] gundas y consortes.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614–15, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] de la puente gaspar ramon luis g[arci]a di[eg]o garcia.’’ De Alfaro, ‘‘pidio al d[ic]ho anton nieto le diese fabor’’; ‘‘pidiendo fabor a la just[ici]a.’’ Nieto, ‘‘no le pidiesen fuese fiador o depositario de algo se aparto de alli’’; ‘‘le pidio fabor acudio a darse el y ya se abia ydo.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerella] anton nieto fra[ncis]co estevan bentura.’’ It appears that after the unusual measure of a formal, lengthy trial, Nieto was released without being sentenced. Witnesses reported that Ariñón had said ‘‘no queria reñir con el’’ and ‘‘se fuese con dios.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2567, no. 3. AGS: CC, leg. 2562, no. 21.

notes to pages 61 – 67

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160. Gómez explained that he first said, ‘‘Se fuese con dios,’’ and the next morning he said, ‘‘Bayase v[uestra] m[erce]d con dios que yo no quiero renir con v[uestra] m[erce]d por cosas q[ue] son de tan poco ynportancia y mas siendo vecinos y amigos.’’ Rico responded, ‘‘Boto a cristo que es un cabron cornudo sino sale a renir conmigo.’’ Gómez explained that ‘‘con las palabras feas que ablo el d[ic]ho pedro rico le obligo a este confesante que saliese a renir con el.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2570, no. 15. 161. Joly, ‘‘Voyage,’’ 571–72. 162. Batista de Lanuza, Homilías sobre los evangelios, 84–87. 163. For England, see Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern England. For France, see Billacois, The Duel; Carroll, Blood and Violence; and Jager, The Last Duel. 164. Spierenburg, ‘‘Knife Fighting and Popular Codes of Honor.’’ 165. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England. 166. Pohl, ‘‘Uneasy Peace.’’ 167. E. Cohen, ‘‘Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome’’; T. Cohen, ‘‘Three Forms of Jeopardy’’ and ‘‘The Lay Liturgy of A√ront in Sixteenth-Century Italy.’’ In addition, see two books that the two authored together: Cohen and Cohen, Daily Life in Renaissance Rome and Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome. 168. Johnson and Lipsett-Rivera, The Faces of Honor. 169. Ru√, Violence in Early Modern Europe, 117–29. chapter 3. honor and the law 1. Honig, Calderón and the Seizures of Honor, 80. 2. Don Lope: ‘‘Yo por el preso he venido, / y a castigar este exceso.’’ Crespo: ‘‘Yo acá le tengo preso / por lo que acá ha sucedido.’’ Don Lope: ‘‘¿Vos sabéis que a servir pasa / al Rey, y soy su juez yo?’’ Crespo: ‘‘¿Vos sabéis que me robó / a mi hija de mi casa?’’ Don Lope: ‘‘¿Vos sabéis que mi valor / dueño de esta causa ha sido?’’ Crespo: ‘‘¿Vos sabéis cómo, atrevido, / robó en un monte mi honor?’’ Don Lope: ‘‘¿Vos sabéis cuánto os prefiere / el cargo que he gobernado?’’ Crespo: ‘‘¿Vos sabéis que le he rogado / con la paz, y no la quiere?’’ Don Lope: ‘‘Que os entráis, es bien se arguya / en otra jurisdicción.’’ Crespo: ‘‘Él se me entró en mi opinion, / sin ser jurisdición suya.’’ Don Lope: ‘‘Yo os sabré satisfacer / obligándome a la paga.’’ Crespo: ‘‘Jamás pedí a nadie que haga / lo que yo me puedo hacer.’’ Calderón, El alcalde de Zalamea, act 3, lines 783–806, pp. 165–66. 3. McKendrick, Playing the King; Fox, Kings in Calderón. 4. McKendrick, Theatre in Spain, 86–88. 5. Ibid., 88–90. 6. Ibid., 148–49. McKendrick argues that all three of Calderón’s famous wifemurder plays (El médico de su honra, A secreto agravio, secreta venganza, and El pintor de su deshonra) feature ‘‘closing scenes riddled with irony and ambiguity in which the husbands’ actions are ratified by authority figures who have already been shown to speak with compromised voices.’’ Ibid., 147–48.

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notes to pages 67 – 70

7. See Alonso Romero, El proceso penal, and the classic Tomás y Valiente, El derecho penal. 8. Ibid., 26. 9. Alonso Romero, El proceso penal, especially 203. 10. Pitt-Rivers, ‘‘Honour and Social Status,’’ 30. 11. ‘‘Propriamente es dicha acusacion profaçamiento que un omo faze a otro ante del judgador afrontado lo de algun yerro, que dize que fizo el acusado e pidiendol que le faga vengança del.’’ Siete partidas. 12. Celso, Las leyes de todos los reynos de Castilla. 13. ‘‘Acusador es el que propone el delicto del delinquente delante del juez para tomar del vengança, acusandole, y pidiendo que le condenen en las penas del.’’ Hevia Bolaños, Curica philippica. For law as vengeance in medieval France and England, see Smail, ‘‘Telling Tales in Angevin Courts,’’ and Hyams, Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England. 14. Some work in Spain, especially dealing with the Inquisition, has begun to acknowledge that judicial authorities could not act without the cooperation of the people they were meant to judge, and that while doing so they skewed the priorities of the legal institutions. Starr-Lebeau, In the Shadow of the Virgin; Dyer, ‘‘Heresy and Dishonor’’; and Barahona, Sex Crimes, Honour, and the Law. Outside of Spain there have been several decades of historiography that finds law and honor intertwined, with one supporting the other and with the participants in criminal and, especially, civil law bending the process for their own ends. The most powerful expressions of this trend are Smail, The Consumption of Justice, and Herrup, The Common Peace. For a broad view of the interconnection between law and honor see Farr, ‘‘Honor, Law, and Custom in Renaissance Europe’’; Stretton, Women Waging Law; Gowing, Domestic Dangers; Kuehn, Law, Family, and Women; Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking; Bossy, Disputes and Settlements; Brewer and Styles, An Ungovernable People; and Egmond and Mason, The Mammoth and the Mouse. This list is by no means exhaustive. 15. ‘‘Y ansi el derecho civil está lleno dellas y de sus castigos, que pues es esto tan notorio, no ay para que referirlas en particular.’’ Artal de Alagón, Concordia de las leyes divinas y humanas, fol. 58r–v. 16. Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, 146–47. For a comprehensive discussion of the development of criminal law in early modern Castile, see Tomás y Valiente, El derecho penal. 17. Celso, Las leyes de todos los reynos de Castilla. 18. Celso, Las leyes de todos los reynos de Castilla; Villadiego, Instrucción política y práctica judicial; Hevia Bolaños, Curica philippica. For discussion see Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, 148–49, and Tomás y Valiente, El derecho penal, 140– 42. 19. Salgado Correa, Libro nombrado regimiento de juezes; Bobadilla, Política para corregidores. For discussion see Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, 148–49, and Tomás y Valiente, El derecho penal, 140–42.

notes to pages 70 – 74

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20. Pradilla Barnuevo, Tratado y summa de todas las leyes. For a discussion of this work and its impact, see Tomás y Valiente, El derecho penal, 44–45. 21. Monterroso y Alvarado, Práctica civil y criminal e instrucción de escribanos. For a discussion of this work and its impact, see Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, 148–49. 22. Nueva recopilación, fol. 163v–164r. See also Chauchadis, La loi du duel, 52–53. 23. ‘‘Se haze injuria por hecho y obra quando algunohiere a otro, y le da golpe con la mano o palo, o con otro instrumento.’’ Pradilla Barnuevo, Tratado y summa de todas las leyes, fol. 59v–62v, 70r–71r. 24. Pradilla Barnuevo took his wording from the Nueva recopilación, fol. 164r. 25. The corruption of judges was a real problem in early modern Spain. Mantecón, ‘‘El mal uso de la justicia.’’ 26. Hevia Bolaños, Curica philippica. 27. Villadiego, Instrucción política y práctica judicial, fol. 59r–66r. 28. The lack of coercive questioning applies only to those cases I examined from the fiel del juzgado. Judicial torture and repetitive questioning appear in the criminal investigations included in the indultos, and it is very possible that the fiel del juzgado used coercive tactics in other cases not included in this project. Certainly other Spanish criminal tribunals tortured suspects. Mantecón, ‘‘La economía del castigo y el perdón en tiempos de Cervantes.’’ 29. This may not be the case at all in other legal procedures that the justicia of Yébenes and the fiel del juzgado oversaw, such as civil cases, or even in criminal cases that did not involve violent disputes, such as theft and cases over the proper uses of land owned by the city of Toledo in Yébenes and its surroundings in the Montes de Toledo. 30. For more on the process of criminal investigations, see Tomás y Valiente, El derecho penal, and Alonso Romero, El proceso penal. 31. ‘‘En el lugar de yevenes de t[ole]do en siete dias del mes de mayo de myll e seys ci[en]to y quynze a[ñ]os el s[eño]r ju[an] m[art]yn çid alc[al]de hordin[ari]o en este lug[a]r de yevenes dixo que a su not[ici]a es venydo que oy d[ic]ho dia en la calle real deste lugar j[urisdici]on de t[ole]do an renydo y tenydo palabras de pesadumbre euxenyo perez oliva v[e]z[in]o deste lug[a]r e fran[cis]co gomez montemayor v[e]z[in]o de la v[ill]a de yevenes y que se desafiaron e tirose uno al otro una mazeta de zapat[e]ro y por averiguacion del caso y que los culpados se an castigado de of[ici]o de just[ici]a se hizo la ynf[ormaci]on e averiguacion deste.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerella] eug[eni]o perez franc[isc]o gomez.’’ 32. ‘‘Pares[c]o ju[an] macho criado de ju[an] lopes portillo y se querello criminalm[en]te de pedro y anton criados de ysabel g[arci]a biuda de di[eg]o palaçios v[ecin]a desta lugar y contando el caso—dijo questanoche a ora de las siete en la d[ic]ha cassa de la d[ic]ha ysabel g[arci]a estando el susod[ic]ho quito errando unas mulas llegaron a el susod[ic]ho y le hecharon en el suelo y le dieron muchas cozes y punadas de questa herido en la cara y hechadole los dientes en el suso pidio a su merçed del d[ic]ho alcalde m[an]de azer la ab-

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33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

notes to pages 76 – 79

erguazion y prender los susod[ic]hos en que se administrara just[ici]a.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘anton boquilla—querella c[ontr]a anton boquilla— criado de ysabel g[arci]a.’’ De la Torre, however, issued the apartamiento to his wife’s attackers. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘q[uerell]a jusepa ibanez.’’ ‘‘Fue sospecha sin fundam[en]to’’; she died ‘‘naturalmente’’; Fernández was an ‘‘honbre de bien.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerella] mateo fernandez tercero.’’ Thomas Kuehn has pointed out that reputation, like the reputation of Mateo Fernández Terzero, was maintained in large part by the gossip of women, which, when it encountered the masculine world of the law, became o≈cial and of legal note. Kuehn, ‘‘Fama as a Legal Status in Renaissance Florence.’’ ‘‘Acusacion es una cosa queda carrera alos que quieren saber laverdad de lo malos fechos por venir mas en cierto a ellos.’’ Siete partidas, fol. 2r. ‘‘Inquirir y averiguar la verdad dela culpa.’’ Salgado Correa, Libro nombrado regimiento de juezes, fol. xiiii(r). In his study of medieval Iceland, William Ian Miller points out that law and vengeance were not incompatible: ‘‘Going to law did not mean forgoing revenge. . . . It was often a sensible way of going about it.’’ Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, 239. Villadiego, Instrucción política y práctica judicial, fol. 48v. Witnesses claim that Serrano was ‘‘algo turbado y colerico.’’ Serrano, ‘‘digo aora lo que de mi a d[ic]ho.’’ AMT: CC, Y 1625–27, ‘‘de ofi[ci]o q[uerell]a ju[an] serrano.’’ For more witness assertiveness on the character of disputants, see also Meyerson, ‘‘The Murder of Pau de Sant Martí.’’ Similarly, reputation and the relationship between individuals, as reported by hearsay or as part of public knowledge, formed the primary basis of evidence in civil suits in late medieval Marseille. See Smail, The Consumption of Justice, 208–13. ‘‘Honbres honrrados quietos y pazificos buenos cristianos y temeroso de dios muy quitados de ruydos y quistiones’’ and that they ‘‘no acosunbran a andar de noche a desora ni dar nota ni escandalo’’ in Yébenes ‘‘antes son honbres exenplares’’ because when ‘‘suzede qualquier discordia entre sus amigos tratan de hazer amistades.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘por las preguntas siguientes se examinen los testigos que se preguntaren por p[ar]te de juan lopez portillo y juan de la calle de abila . . .’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘crim[ina]l q[uerell]a de esteban paninas v[ecin]o de la villa de yebenes contra al[ons]o de abila b[ecin]o de la d[ic]ha villa.’’ Again the calling of many witnesses to testify to one’s good social standing is very similar to the dynamics of civil trials as described in Smail, The Consumption of Justice. ‘‘Sencillamente sin pasion ninguna y no con animo de o√ender.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘joan anaya q[uerell]a lic[encien]do ju[an] cid.’’

notes to pages 79 – 83

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45. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘querella de lucas hernandez contra alonso delpejo v[ecin]o de xaen.’’ 46. One witness called the quarrel a ‘‘cossa de poca consideracion.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘q[uerell]a m[ari]a gomez la montera.’’ 47. But see Clive Holmes’s warning that in witch trials, elite men coerced nonelite women into betraying each other in legal proceedings. Holmes, ‘‘Women: Witnesses and Witches.’’ 48. Falk, ‘‘Bystanders and Hearsayers First.’’ 49. Daniel Smail emphasizes that the fact that judicial proceedings in late medieval Marseille were carried out in public magnified their impact on the accused, humiliating them in the process. Smail, The Consumption of Justice, 22–23. 50. ‘‘Suzia,’’ ‘‘mentia,’’ ‘‘bellaca,’’ ‘‘borracha,’’ and ‘‘testigo falso’’ are the names he called her. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] bermexo.’’ 51. ‘‘Libelos ynfamatorios.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘de ofi[ci]o por la justi[ci]a de yebenes contra blas de palaçios v[e]z[in]o de la vi[ll]a de yeb[en]es.’’ 52. ‘‘Fueron burlandose como amigos’’; ‘‘amigos verdaderos.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerella] bar[tolo]me çid y luis estevan.’’ 53. ‘‘No es de consideraçion.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1625–27, ‘‘de ofi[ci]o sobre el pobre que se mato.’’ 54. ‘‘Les tomo los manos de amigos.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerella] eug[eni]o perez fran[cis]co gomez.’’ 55. Grasping hands was also the normal way to symbolically end a row in the early modern Netherlands. Roodenburg, ‘‘The ‘Hand of Friendship.’ ’’ 56. Carroll, Blood and Violence, 222. 57. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614–15, ‘‘q[uerell]a fran[cis]co sanchez.’’ 58. Hevia Bolaños, Curica philippica, 579–80; Villadiego, Instrucción política y práctica judicial, fol. 58v. 59. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘de ofi[ci]o q[uerell]a di[eg]o de billareal ju[an] de villare[a]l.’’ 60. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerella] fran[cis]co ruyz paninas.’’ 61. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[a]n bermejo de la barrera.’’ 62. Tomás y Valiente, El derecho penal, 84. Hevia Bolaños asserted that apartamientos could save the accused from the galleys too. Hevia Bolaños, Curica philippica, 579–80. 63. López de San Marcos claimed that Ana, the daughter, had a√ronted his sister María López, and that he did not assault her but only told her not to speak that way to honored women. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1622–23, ‘‘q[uerell]a sevastian lopez.’’ 64. Crespo seems to have been some kind of grain merchant, miller, and/or landowner and therefore able to a√ord the payment. Toral de los Guzmanes is near León. Another location today for the Good Friday Pardons (Indultos de Viernes Santo) is the Archivo Histórico Nacional, filed under Consejos by

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65. 66. 67.

68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

notes to pages 84 – 92

legajo number. This pardon is found in legajo 5576, number 12. (Hereafter, cases from this archive will be abbreviated as, e.g., AHN: Consejos, leg. 5576, no. 12.) AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘cabeza de proceso contra p[edr]o cordoves y graviel g[arci]a.’’ Alonso Romero, El proceso penal, 196–203. ‘‘No tienen juridicion criminal y en suzediendo algun casso de o√[ici]o de jus[tici]a o por querella de p[ar]te tien lo obligacion a escrivir y prender y dentro de terzero dia remitirlos presso con los prozesso causados.’’ This is the same case, from chapter 2, in which a woman accused a man of being cuckolded by an old shoemaker. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘p[edro] m[arti]nyuez molinero q[uerell]a m[ari]a lopez muger de al[ons]o blas.’’ James Casey agrees, describing the early modern Spanish judge as ‘‘more in the nature of a ‘little father’ of his community.’’ Casey, Family and Community, 225. Along the same lines, see Mantecón, ‘‘Popular Culture and the Arbitration of Disputes’’ and ‘‘El peso de la infrajudicialidad.’’ See also Lenman and Parker, ‘‘The State, the Community, and the Criminal Law,’’ and Tomás y Valiente, El derecho penal, 198–200, 355–65. For the use of harsh criminal punishments as a deterrent to crime in an age where few crimes were successfully prosecuted throughout Europe, see also Dean and Lowe, ‘‘Introduction,’’ 4. Weisser, ‘‘Crime and Subsistence,’’ 103–5. Roberts, Order and Dispute, 71. Alonso Romero, El proceso penal, 202, 205–6. ‘‘No es mug[e]r de buen trato.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1608–9, ‘‘q[uerell]a de sevilla de bern[a]l.’’ She was asked if she would acknowledge that they were ‘‘gente onrada y prinzipal y de buena bida fama y opinion’’ and that Ysabel de Zepeda was a ‘‘mug[e]r onesta y recojida.’’ She agreed that ‘‘por tales los tiene y son abidos y tenidos sin saber cosa en contrario.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘p[edro] m[arti]nyuez molinero q[uerell]a m[ari]a lopez muger de al[ons]o blas.’’ For example, the Siete partidas defined taking back something one had said earlier as a disgrace. Bowman, ‘‘Infamy and Proof in Medieval Spain,’’ 103. Alonso Romero speaks of the essentially coercive nature of imprisonment and the quistión, and how even some contemporary jurists criticized the criminal justice system on these grounds. Alonso Romero, El proceso penal, 192–203. Pradilla Barnuevo, Tratado y summa de todas las leyes, fol. 21v–23v. This estimate taken from Elliott, Imperial Spain, 286. ‘‘Pena de se castigado por toda rigor’’ was the stock phrase used. Villadiego, Instrucción política y práctica judicial, fol. 64r–v, 66r. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘f[rancis]co delg[a]do quereller.’’ Determining how widespread bribery was in any early modern legal system is problematic since bribe takers and bribe givers would of course try not to leave any record of their illegal activities. Dean and Lowe, ‘‘Introduction,’’ 6.

notes to pages 92 – 101

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82. Villadiego, Instrucción política y práctica judicial, fol. 59r, 64r–v. 83. Casey, ‘‘Household Disputes and the Law in Early Modern Andalusia.’’ 84. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘cabeza q[uerella] marcos despinar ju[an] despinar cat[alin]a s[anch]ez.’’ 85. He admitted having said the phrase ‘‘boto a dios que en este lugar no sirben sino es soplones y son todos unos cornudos cabrones’’ in the presence of the alcaldes but insisted that the remark was not directed at them, for whom he had ‘‘respeto,’’ but at some soldiers. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] carpio y los alcaldes.’’ 86. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerella] anton nieto francisco estevan bentura.’’ 87. For a description of this stage of the process, see Heras Santo, La justicia penal de los Austrias, 177, and Alonso Romero, El proceso penal, 225–43. 88. ‘‘En la paz, concordia y sossiego de los vezinos consiste principalmente la conservacion del pueblo y el servicio de Dios y del principe.’’ Salgado Correa, Libro nombrado regimiento de juezes, fol. xix(r). 89. Heras Santo estimates that 90 percent of those receiving Good Friday Pardons had been convicted of homicide. The discussion here of Good Friday Pardons depends largely on his ‘‘Indultos concedidos por la Cámara de Castilla en tiempos de los Austria.’’ 90. Siete partidas, fol. 95r. 91. Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, 156–58; Elliott, Imperial Spain, 174. 92. Davis, Fiction in the Archives. 93. Ibid. 94. Smail, The Consumption of Justice; Gowing, Domestic Dangers. 95. Sharpe, ‘‘ ‘Such Disagreement betwyxt Neighbours.’ ’’ For medieval Italy, see Osheim, ‘‘Countrymen and the Law in Late-Medieval Tuscany,’’ and Wickham, ‘‘Gossip and Resistance among the Medieval Peasantry.’’ 96. Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, 239. 97. Herrup, The Common Peace. 98. Farr, ‘‘Honor, Law, and Custom in Renaissance Europe,’’ 132. 99. Stretton, Women Waging Law; Roodenburg, ‘‘The ‘Hand of Friendship’ ’’; and Wrightson, ‘‘Two Concepts of Order.’’ chapter 4. men 1. ‘‘¡Mal haya el primero, amen, / que hizo ley tan rigurosa! / Poco del honor sabía / el legislador tirano, / que puso en ajena mano / mi opinion, y no en la mía. / ¡Que a otro mi honra se sujete, / y sea (¡oh, injusta ley traidora!) / la afrenta de quien la llora, / y no de quien la comete! / ¿Mi fama ha de ser honrosa, / cómplice al mal y no al bien? / ¡Mal haya el primero, amen, / que hizo ley tan rigurosa! / ¿El honor que nace mío, / esclavo de otro? Eso no. / ¡Y que me condene yo / por el ajeno albedrío! / ¿Cómo bárbaro consiente / el mundo este infame rito? / Donde no hay culpa ¿hay delito? / Siendo otro el delincuente, / de su malicia afrentosa, / ¡que a mí el castigo me den! / ¡Mal haya el primero, amen, / que hizo ley tan rigurosa! / De cuantos el mundo

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2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

notes to pages 101 – 6

advierte / infelices, ¡ay de mí!, / ¿habrá otro más que yo?’’ Calderón, El pintor de su deshonra, act III, lines 487–515, pp. 214–15. For an analysis of the play, see McKendrick, Theatre in Spain, 150–52. For a summary of the most famous and important honor plays, see ibid. For an analysis, see ibid., pp. 104–7. The classic work is Pitt-Rivers, ‘‘Honour and Social Status.’’ See also Blok, ‘‘Rams and Billy-Goats.’’ In anthropology, this view has been largely overturned, although students of history and literature are still influenced by the older, structuralist view of honor in twentieth-century Spain and carry it over into their own work. For revisionism see Herzfeld, Anthropology through the Looking-Glass. For an overview of honor in the anthropology of the Mediterranean, see Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 487–523. Outside of Spain, the picture of manhood is similar. See, for example, Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination; Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation; and Shepard, ‘‘Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy.’’ The eight cases were all pulled together and contained in AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] camacho.’’ ‘‘Boto a [christ] q[ue] le a de costar sus dineros por aver me quitado las armas.’’ Ibid. ‘‘Aunque me quiten la espada tanbien tengo yo ladrillos’’; ‘‘boto a [christ]o q[ue] la just[ici]a son unos bellacos cabritos que me an querido sacer de sagrado y boto a dios q[ue] si bienen los bellacos hodidos horadados cabritos que tengo de matar a v[uestra] m[erce]d.’’ Ibid. See the definition for cabrito in Covarrubias, Tesoro. ‘‘Su mag[esta]d deste don ph[elip]e nuestro señor era un puto.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] camacho.’’ ‘‘Un cornudo judio todo con animo de quitarme mi buena reputaçion.’’ Ibid. For an overview of this process, see Casey, Family and Community, and Poska, Regulating the People. Homza, Religious Authority in the Spanish Renaissance, 159. For an overview of early modern Spanish confessor’s manuals, see ibid., 150–75. See also Tentler, Sin and Confession. For more on López de Vega, see Acquier, ‘‘Los tratados en prosa de Antonio López de Vega.’’ ‘‘Particularmente en la España, donde por la generosidad de coraçones y animos nobles . . . tan gran lugar tiene, lo que les parece que importa, para conservar la honra y estimacion que una de las cosas que en España lleva muchas almas al infierno, es esta,’’ Batista de Lanuza, Homilías sobre los evangelios, 84–87. Azpilcueta Navarro, Manual de confesores y penitents, 149. ‘‘Considera otrosí cuán duro eres para con el prójimo, y cuán piadoso para contigo, cuán amigo de tu propria voluntad y de tu carne y de tu honra y de todos tus intereses.’’ ‘‘Mas ¿por qué causa pecaste? Por un punto de honra,

notes to pages 107 – 10

19.

20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35.

36.

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por un deleite de bestias, por un cabello de interés, y por otras cosas de aire.’’ Luis de Granada, Libro de oración, 58–59. Urrea, Diálogo de la verdadera honra militar, 82–83. For an examination of early modern anger, see Pollock, ‘‘Anger and the Negotiation of Relationships in Early Modern England,’’ and Pérez García, La Comparsa de los Malhechores, 248–53. Ciruelo, Arte de bien confesar, fol. 42r–42v. Puente, Tratado de la perfecion en todos los estados, book 1, 315. For example, Luis de Granada inveighed against the sins of murmuración (‘‘gossip’’), menosprecio (‘‘scorn’’), and desdén (‘‘disdain’’). Luis de Granada, Guía de pecadores, 129–130. Ciruelo, Arte de bien confesar, fol. 31r–32r. ‘‘Afeminada.’’ Artal de Alagón, Concordia de las leyes divinas y humanas, fol. 101r–101v. ‘‘Un Señor con el sombrero en la mano gana para la cabeça Corona.’’ Núñez de Castro, Libro histórico político, 325. ‘‘Republica de descortes.’’ Ibid., 325–29. ‘‘Guardar toda cortesia y suavidad’’; ‘‘guardar toda obediencía y prompta execucion de los que nos mandan.’’ Ciruelo, Arte de bien confesar, fol. 28v–29r. Núñez de Castro, Libro histórico político, 325–26. ‘‘El primer mandamiento es honrar a Dios.’’ Luís de Granada, Libro de oración, 62. ‘‘Pues ¿qué manera de fe tenía quien vivía tan rotamente como si creyera que toda lo que predica la fe era mentira? . . . ¿Qué caridad tenía quien amaba más el puntillo de honra, y la paja del interés y el cieno del deleite que al mismo Dios, pues por cada cosa de éstas lo despreciaba y ofendía?’’ Ibid., 62. ‘‘Por solo desprecio de Dios?’’ Ibid., 64. ‘‘Assi es honrra guardarla, quien vive en ella.’’ Bastista de Lanuza, Homilías sobre los evangelios, 101. ‘‘Veo, que no ay Rey ni señor tan vil, que alomenos sus vassallos y los paniaguados de su casa, no se precien y honrren de su librea, y de guardar lo que manda.’’ Ibid., 101–2. Ibid., 97. ‘‘Y aunque hayamos de tener siempre guerra con todos nuestros apetitos, pero especialmente la conviene tener con los deseos de honra, y deleites y de bienes temporales.’’ Luís de Granada, Guía de pecadores, 158. ‘‘Mas particularmente por aquí se alcanza este aborrecimiento de sí mismo, el cual tiene por oficio no sólo huir los regalos del cuerpo, y buscar los trabajos, sino mucho más despreciar toda dignidad y honra del mundo, y amar todo menosprecio y deshonra. Y este afecto pertenece propiamente a la humildad; la cual es un menosprecio entrañable de sí mismo, que nace del verdadero conocimiento de sí mismo, y de sus propios pecados.’’ Luis de Granada, Libro de oración, 73.

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notes to pages 110 – 14

37. For a similar emphasis on the everyday nature of honor and honesty, see Castan, Honnêteté et relations sociales. 38. Other bodies of evidence might provide di√erent aspects of male honor that do not appear in the criminal records. For one example, that of male impotence as a cause of public shame, see Behrend-Martínez, Unfit for Marriage, 135–41. See also Garza Carvajal, Butterflies Will Burn. 39. Guerrero claimed, ‘‘It is well known that I am an honorable man and I have a wife of honorable qualities and also that we are good Christians, fearful of God and of our consciences, and she and I are of good life and repute’’ (‘‘Es not[ori]o yo soy honbre honrrada y tengo muger de honrradas prendas [qualities] y yo y ella somos buenos [Christ]ianos temerosos de dios y de nuestra conciençias y de buena bida y fama’’). The fiel del juzgado’s lieutenants asked Camacho whether he would acknowledge that Guerrero and his wife were ‘‘pure Old Christians and honorable people of good life and wellrespected and are among the good people of Yébenes’’ (‘‘[chris]tianos biejos linpios y gente honrrada de buena bida y fama y de lo bueno del lugar’’). AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] camacho.’’ 40. Moreno, ‘‘No ponga mano sobre my muger que hare un dispareta.’’ Camacho, ‘‘a asperamente no se acuerda que palabras.’’ Moreno, ‘‘no sabe que palabra de desir mas que fueron respondiendo al mal termyno del di[c]ho ju[an] camacho.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] camacho.’’ 41. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] de la cruz.’’ 42. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘caveza de prozesso q[uerell]a luis de palacios.’’ 43. Ana, ‘‘pliega dios que de alla no bengas y bellaca ynfame.’’ Lopez, ‘‘quitta habla mal a las mugeres honrradas’’; ‘‘sin llegar a ella dixo que la mataba.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1622–23, ‘‘q[uerell]a sevastian lopez.’’ 44. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1609–10, ‘‘ynfor[maci]on de o≈[ci]o q[uerel]la ju[an] perez’’; AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerell]a m[ari]a f[ernand]ez muger de andres g[arci]a carrasco.’’ 45. Abad, ‘‘a partese senor dejeme pasar.’’ Trebiño stated that Abad was ‘‘trata de casarse con una sobrina [niece] suya y la rronda y pasea sin quererse ella casar con el.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘q[uerell]a pedro treviño fran[cis]co abad.’’ 46. Vélez asked Medina why he had sent her away ‘‘nora mala.’’ Medina was accused of calling Vélez’s wife ‘‘desbergonzada.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘caveza de processo q[uerell]a ju[an] de medina.’’ 47. AGS: CC, leg. 2556, no. 19. 48. ‘‘La tomo la varva’’ is what the unidentified man did to Pérez de Rojas’s wife. The sword fight led to the accidental death of a man trying to make peace, which is what led to the criminal case and eventual pardon. AGS: CC, leg. 2557, no. 14. Other examples of men protecting women kin besides their wives include AGS: CC, leg. 2562, no. 9, and AGS: CC, leg. 2567, no. 5. 49. A ‘‘chufeta’’ is what Porea directed at Sigura. It was a third party, Juan Pas-

notes to pages 114 – 20

50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55.

56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63.

64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

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qual, perhaps one of Porea’s friends, who received a pardon. AGS: CC, leg. 2566, no. 17. ‘‘Que linda vorracha aze la Manuela’’ or ‘‘q[u]e haçia buena borracha ella’’ is what Ysidro reportedly said to Manuela. AGS: CC, leg. 2557, no. 10. ‘‘Que a el no le ymportava nada.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2560, no. 12. AGS: CC, leg. 2565, no. 24. López Portillo ‘‘se descompusso . . . le dixo hera un bellaco metiendo mano a su espada contra el.’’ He claimed that the search was ‘‘cosas nunca se acostunbra a haçer.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerella] andres lopez portillo.’’ Rodríguez said he saw the men ‘‘querian mal tratar a su ermano.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614–15, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] r[odrigue]s portugues.’’ ‘‘Si os quisiera matar bien pudiera.’’ Bartolomé Ximénez was fined one thousand maravedís, and Juan Ximénez was sentenced to a year of exile, presumably either from Yébenes or from the entire Montes. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614, ‘‘de o≈[ci]o q[uerella] ju[an] ximenez b[a]r[tolo]me ximenez.’’ Francisco Miguel claimed he was only trying to calm the situation and avoid scandal, not free his brother. He was fined two hundred maravedís. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘ju[an] miguel fran[cis]co miguel eug[eni]o diaz.’’ Gonçales and Nieto were ‘‘capitales enemigos.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2558, no. 16. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerella] fran[cis]co lopez pedro lopez ju[an] serrano mateo garcia di[eg]o m[arti]n nadios.’’ Soto, Obligaciones de todos los estados, fol. 112v–113r. For explanation of the role that purity of blood had in Castile, see Sicro√, Les controverses des statuts de ‘‘pureté de sang.’’ See chapter 2. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘q[uerell]a sebastian de sevilla,’’ and AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘criminal q[uerell]a desteban paninas v[ecin]o de yevenes contra al[ons]o de abila v[ecin]o de la d[ic]ha billa.’’ ‘‘Ninguno de buesto linage ni bos no podeis ser familiar.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘q[uerell]a sebastian de sevilla.’’ In Consuegra, García had said, ‘‘Botado a dios que era un judio y nieto de uno horcado y que para el sabado benidero le desafiaba que saliese con espada y fuese honbre p[ar]a renir con el.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1609–10, ‘‘querella de eugenio f[ernand]ez contra sebastian garçia ju[an] bermejo.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614, ‘‘q[uerell]a catalina lopez.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1608–9, ‘‘q[uerella] mari[a] prieta.’’ See chapter 2. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerell]a fran[cis]co esteban,’’ and AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘querella de fran[cis]co de la cruz.’’ ‘‘A todo su linage que todos no son nada para mi y quien es su linage.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘fran[cis]co del coral juan martin.’’ Camacho, ‘‘senor diego r[odrigue]s dos palabras; ‘‘le pagase trenta reales q[ue] le devia.’’ Rodríguez, ‘‘no le debo nada porq[ue] si yo le debiera alg[un]a cosa no abia de dar lug[a]r a que me lo pidiera.’’ Camacho, ‘‘si me los debe.’’ Rodríguez, ‘‘bos deçis que me los diestes delante de t[erce]ro pues lo dejo di-

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69.

70.

71.

72. 73. 74. 75.

76.

77.

notes to pages 120 – 24

ferido en lo que he terçero dijere y a que lo digo delante de luis çid clerigo porque estare por ello.’’ Camacho, ‘‘boto a dios que no se lo e de pedir por justiçia’’; ‘‘me boto a dios que lo he de matar por que no a de tirar [turar?] toda la bida el estar yo retraydo.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] camacho.’’ Lyman L. Johnson has found credit similarly implicated in fights over honor in colonial Latin America. Johnson, ‘‘Dangerous Words, Provocative Gestures, and Violent Acts.’’ For a discussion of the link between credit and honor in Italy, see Ago, Economia Barocca. Phillips, Ciudad Real, 60–64; Casey, Early Modern Spain, 68–69. Phillips posits that ‘‘simple cash or barter sales probably accounted for much of the sales volume,’’ because she could not find evidence of loans in the notarial records. But informal verbal loans, which would not have appeared in notarial records, figure prominently in violent conflict, and therefore I suspect that they were quite common. Craig Muldrew has shown this to be the case for early modern England. Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation. See also Smail, ‘‘Credit, Risk and Honor in Eighteenth-Century Commerce.’’ In France, Italy, and northern Spain it was similar. Carroll, Blood and Violence, 29; Levi, Inheriting Power, 44; and Mantecón, ‘‘The Patterns of Violence in Early Modern Spain.’’ Credit could even become a component of masculinity, for it indicated a man’s economic autonomy and his ability as a thrifty, diligent patriarch to oversee a sound household. MacKay, ‘‘Lazy, Improvident People’’; Shepard, ‘‘Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy.’’ One example of debt listed as a source of dueling is in Villasante, Tractatus del duello, fol. L(v)–Lii(r). Rodríguez Lusitano, Obras morales, 432–33. ‘‘Si yo le debiera alg[un]a cosa no abia de dar lug[a]r a que me lo pidiera.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] camacho.’’ Ximénez, ‘‘dixo no los tengo porque lo se gastado.’’ Bermejo, ‘‘bien dizen q[ue] u[uestra] m[erce]d es amygo de su din[er]o y paga mal.’’ Ximénez, ‘‘quyen dixe que yo pago mal myente.’’ Bermejo, ‘‘que a no estar el s[eñ]or alcalde delante sacara la da[ga] y diera al d[ic]ho b[a]r[tolo]me x[imen]ez con ella.’’ The alcalde ‘‘los hiciese amygos o los llevasen presos y ansi les tomo las manos y hiço amigos.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerell]a p[edr]o bermejo ortega b[a]r[tolo]me ximenez.’’ Ruiz, ‘‘era un bellaco mal nacido susçio.’’ López, ‘‘hera tan bueno como este q[uerellant]e.’’ Ruiz, ‘‘ni aun como mi culo.’’ López, ‘‘me quitar mi buena reputaçion y bida y fama y hacer me mal.’’ The phrase used to describe López was ‘‘honbre de bien y onrrado de buena bida y fama y opinion y bien naçido y de honrrados deudos e parientes.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerell]a gaspar ruyz.’’ ‘‘Una prenda’’ is what Rubio was carrying. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘q[uerell]a sebast[i]an rubios.’’

notes to pages 125 – 30

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78. Cid, ‘‘pues boto a dios que no los abeis de cobrar en un mes ni aun en dos.’’ García, ‘‘ahorcalle.’’ Cid, ‘‘mejor hareis de besalles en el culo.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1622–23, ‘‘q[uerell]a b[a]r[tolo]me cid.’’ 79. For a similar example of a third party’s involvement in a debt resulting in violence, see AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerell]a fran[cis]co de la cruz.’’ 80. The paintings were of ‘‘San José, the Virgin, and San Francisco.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘q[uerell]a contra andres de peñalber.’’ 81. ‘‘No se lo savia de pedir de aquella manera sino p[o]r horden de la just[ici]a.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘diho que me lo pidiera por justicia . . .’’ (first folio missing). 82. ‘‘Esta en conciencia obligado a pagarla.’’ Rodríguez Lusitano, Obras morales, 211–12. 83. Nieto (according to Ramón), ‘‘que si biniese puto no quiso.’’ According to Nieto himself, he said ‘‘con mucha crianza y respecto’’ that if Ramón ‘‘mostrandole los recaudos que traya p[a]ra prenderle se yria de muy buena gana.’’ Ramón, ‘‘el no tenia nescesidad de mostrar le recaudos p[a]ra prendelle.’’ Nieto, ‘‘le lleba se como honbre de bien y no de aquella manera.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘q[uerell]a a[n]dres nyeto.’’ 84. Hernández, ‘‘no queria yr ni renir con el.’’ Carcax, ‘‘beni si sois hombre.’’ The location of ‘‘Vequena’’ is uncertain. AGS: CC, leg. 2561, no. 6. 85. Martín called Francisco a ‘‘cornudo.’’ ‘‘Por estafa’’ was the phrase used to mean a trick or swindle. AGS: CC, leg. 2566, no. 7. 86. Chaves’s son-in-law seized the knife from the son’s hand and used it to kill a third party over a seemingly unrelated matter. The death of the third party was the cause of the criminal investigation. Eventually, a pardon was issued to Jerónimo de Chaves and his son, probably because they were not involved in the actual homicide. AGS: CC, leg. 2563, no. 18. 87. ‘‘Un ladron porque abia hurtado gallinas y sayas y se las abia ydo a bender a ella.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1609–10, ‘‘q[uerell]a cat[alin]a lopez al[ons]o carrasco.’’ 88. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614, ‘‘q[uerell]a andres g[arci]a de gaspar.’’ 89. Hernández was accused of calling her brothers ‘‘unos ladrones usurpadores de haciendas hazenas.’’ In the scribe’s presence she complained that ‘‘sus hermanos y cunados lo heçien mal con ella en pedieles partiçion de lo que hera suyo y avia heredado y trabaxado ella y sumarido los mal deçia por una pieza de casa que ella y su marido abian edificado.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘q[uerell]a catalina h[ernand]ez.’’ 90. Rubio alleged that Bermejo became angry ‘‘porque los pobres no rezebian otilidad en el admynistrazion sino los ricos.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] bermejo—p[edr]o bermexo—ju[an] garoz.’’ 91. AGS: CC, leg. 2562, no. 13. 92. ‘‘Se fuese con dios que si fuese suyo se lo pidiese por justicia.’’ The tool they were fighting over was a ‘‘hazardon.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2560, no. 32. 93. ‘‘No le conoçia por just[ici]a’’; ‘‘no la queria dar sino avia luz para conocer el’’;

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94.

95. 96.

97.

98.

99.

100. 101.

102. 103.

104.

notes to pages 130 – 34

‘‘vela aqui v[uestra] m[erce]d pero yo yre a my casa por otra espada y se la quitare.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] camacho.’’ Camacho, ‘‘boto a [christ] q[ue] le a de costar sus dineros por aver me quitado las armas’’; ‘‘aunque me quiten la espada tanbien tengo yo ladrillos.’’ Palaçios, ‘‘q[ue] deçis de ladrillos por que no hablays bien criado a quien abeys de dar por ellos.’’ Camacho, ‘‘bayase v[uestra] m[erce]d con dios y deje me con dios o con el diablo’’; ‘‘mañana dejare la bara y seremos todo yguales’’; ‘‘q[ue] boto a [christ]o q[ue] la just[ici]a son unos bellacos cabritos que me an querido sacer de sagrado y boto a dios q[ue] si bienen los bellacos hodidos horadados cabritos que tengo de matar a v[uestra] m[erce]d.’’ Ibid. Covarrubias, Tesoro, 835. For a discussion of trade membership and artisan identity, see Amelang, The Flight of Icarus, 97–103; MacKay, ‘‘Lazy, Improvident People’’; Farr, Hands of Honor; and Farr, Artisans in Europe. ‘‘No sabe lo ques el ofi[ci]o de zapatero pues no da por el cordoban mas de doce reales.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614–15, ‘‘de o≈[ci]o contra p[edr]o loçano capatero.’’ This entire account came from Díaz’s testimony. Franco, ‘‘como esta v[uestra] m[erce]d senor p[edr]o diaz’’; ‘‘estoy muy enojado con v[uestra] m[erce]d porque me anda sacando mis muchachos.’’ Díaz, ‘‘eso no lo acostunbro yo a haçer y menos lo hare agora porque si lo ubiera de haçer ocasion me a dado v[uestra] m[erce]d para ello por por que me a son sacado algunos muchachos q[ue] yo tenia en mi esquella y a pretendido con halagos sacer me otros.’’ Franco, ‘‘boto a [christ]o que qual la quelo dixe remyente que antes me a d[ic]ho a my q[ue] v[uestra] m[erce]d ba cada dia a las casas de mis muchachos a decir a sus padres q[ue] se los lleben a su esquela.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘de ofi[ci]o de justiçia contra gregorio franco.’’ ‘‘Callase que no lo entendia.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1622–23, ‘‘q[uerell]a baltasar anaya diego r[odrigue]s de fig[uero]a.’’ This case seems to have been filed in the wrong legajo. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘q[uerella] gabriel guerrero benito de palome.’’ Sandoval, ‘‘el y su amo heran unos careros que siempre llevavan mas de lo que mereçian’’; ‘‘lo pagaria.’’ García, ‘‘no le llevase q[ue] no hera suyo sino de su amo.’’ Sandoval, ‘‘picaro desvergonçado y por esso le dejava.’’ García, ‘‘el hera un mal nacido.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2562, no. 29. ‘‘Juro que le avia de dar los tres reales o que avia de quitar las herraduras al macho.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2560, no. 26. Their catchall responsibilities were similar to the early modern papal police, as described in Hughes, ‘‘Fear and Loathing in Bologna and Rome.’’ Unlike the papal police, however, they were not reviled as a low-status stratum of society, probably because as members of a smaller community they retained more normal social ties to their neighbors and did not rely solely on their constable position for their income and status. The o≈cial status of judicial o≈cials blended into their personal social status

notes to pages 134 – 39

105. 106.

107. 108.

109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115.

116.

117.

118.

119.

120. 121. 122. 123.

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in early modern France as well. See Greenshields, An Economy of Violence in Early Modern France, 45–62. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘q[uerella] estevan ruiz paninos blas ruiz.’’ ‘‘Le mostras en poder y mostrado se le notificase y sino no’’; ‘‘hera tan bueno como el.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614–15, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] de la puente gaspar ramon.’’ Pradilla Barnuevo, Tratado y summa de todas las leyes, fol. 185r–189v. ‘‘Y obligar a las tales personas a que sobresaltados hagan lo mismo para defenderse, entendiendo que los quieren matar, y no conociendo la justicia.’’ Bobadilla, Política para corregidores, 235. ‘‘Para que sea creydo y conocido . . . y si no le conocieron, le resistan sin pena.’’ Bobadilla, Política para corregidores, 233. ‘‘Se enpezaron a burlar como otras bezes suele’’; ‘‘le dolo una palabra del cortesya.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1608–9, ‘‘q[uerella] al[ons]o g[arci]a.’’ Rodríguez Lusitano, Obras morales, 59–60; Pradilla Barnuevo, Tratado y summa de todas las leyes, fol. 100v–103r. Soto, Obligaciones de todos los estados, fol. 92r–92v. Bobadilla, Politíca para corregidores, 219–23. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerell]a eug[eni]o perez oliva.’’ ‘‘Yo no bengo a renir con el q[ue] yo puedo andar de noche’’; ‘‘a querelle satisfazer dello’’; ‘‘hordinariamente el suele traer como alguacil.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1622–23, ‘‘de o≈[ci]o q[uerell]a ag[ust]in carpio fra[ncis]co de la cruz.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘q[uerell]a de s[ebasti]an garoz q[uerell]a p[edr]o de ortega.’’ Madrid constables had similar problems of indefinite boundaries between their o≈cial and personal status. See MacKay, ‘‘Lazy, Improvident People.’’ ‘‘Confiesa q[ue] yba y benia a comer y zenar a la d[ic]ha su casa por m[an]do de los d[ic]hos alcaldes.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614, ‘‘de o≈[ci]o q[uerella] ju[an] ximenez b[a]r[tolo]me ximenez.’’ Martín claimed that López de Ruedas and his fellow constables had impounded his goods by mistake and really wanted his neighbor’s. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] martin.’’ ‘‘Le avia de ssacar el corazon a el.’’ Other witnesses claim that Pérez de Villaviciosa called Fernández and whoever gave him the vara ‘‘ymfame,’’ not ‘‘bellaco.’’ ‘‘Odio’’ (hatred) is how Pérez Villaviciosa described his feelings for Fernández after their initial dispute. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1622–23, ‘‘de o≈[ci]o q[uerel]la el medico y [christ]obal f[ernande]z alguacil.’’ ‘‘Hecho muchos agravios.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1625–27, ‘‘de o≈[ci]o q[uerella] de ju[an] m[ari]n guerrero q[uerel]la fran[cis]co marin.’’ ‘‘No le llebe asido porque aunque lo manden cinquenta alcaldes’’; ‘‘un honbre honrado.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘q[uerella] fran[cis]co el soldado.’’ A ‘‘coleto’’ is what the constable tried to seize. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614, ‘‘de yevenes y le quebraron la bara de just[ici]a . . .’’ ‘‘Tener cordua, templança y paciencia . . . sufrir y passar los dessabrimientos

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124. 125. 126. 127.

128.

129.

130.

131.

132. 133. 134.

135. 136.

137. 138. 139.

notes to pages 140 – 44

y enojos de todas las personas con quien entienden en la execucion de sus oficios.’’ Bobadilla, Política para corregidores, 219–23. AHN: Consejos, leg. 5576, no. 5. ‘‘Inhumanidad.’’ López de Vega, El perfecto señor, 37. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] camacho.’’ The anthropologist David D. Gilmore has found this to be the case among men in late twentieth-century Andalusia as well. Gilmore, Aggression and Community; see also chapter 2, ‘‘Performative Excellence: CircumMediterranean,’’ in Gilmore, Manhood in the Making. For the unruly sociability of young men in early modern Spain, see Usunáriz, ‘‘El lenguaje de la cencerrada,’’ and Mantecón, ‘‘The Patterns of Violence in Early Modern Spain.’’ For the rest of Europe, see Gri≈ths, Youth and Authority. Stuart Carroll reminds us that choosing to exact revenge in a public space and during festivals was a way to broadcast the successful revenge and humiliation of one’s opponent. Carroll, Blood and Violence, 166–70. For festivals, see, for example, Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 178–204; Le Roy Ladurie, Carnival in Romans; and Davis, Fiction in the Archives. For socializing at night, see Ekirch, At Day’s Close. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘de ofi[ci]o q[uerel]la contra pedro cid y roq[u]e serbantes’’; AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] bermejo—p[edr]o bermexo— ju[an] garoz.’’ The brawl actually took place on the evening of November 1, not on Halloween. Those involved seem to be around seventeen or eighteen years old. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1622–23, ‘‘q[uerell]a al[ons]o f[ernand]ez de orgaz— g[e]r[oni]mo garcia [illegible word]—ju[an] blas hijo de ju[an] blas—sevastian robledo—m[arti]n de arroba.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘q[uerell]a fran[cis]co de villar[e]al el mozo.’’ ‘‘Pres[en]te mucha xente en altas boces por nos deshonrrar y manchar n[uest]ra buena fama.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614, ‘‘q[uerell]a juan de lucas pastor.’’ They described him as ‘‘yba prebalicado de algun bino’’ (‘‘going along overcome by some wine’’). AMT: CC, Y leg. 1646–50, ‘‘cabeça de processo de oficio q[uerella] gaspar de albañiz.’’ Rodríguez Lusitano, Obras morales, 241–44. See, for example, Spierenburg, ‘‘Knife Fighting and Popular Codes of Honor’’; Brennan, Public Drinking and Popular Culture, 20–75; and Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion. Márquez was ‘‘tirandose las barbas.’’ Pérez was ‘‘botando a [chris]to q[ue] era un cabron el suplicante.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2569 no. 38. García, ‘‘que hera mal hecho.’’ Collazos, ‘‘que el lo avia echado y estava bien heco.’’ AGC: CC, leg. 2563, no. 12. Azeña, ‘‘valgale el diablo no ay calle harta.’’ Mexia, ‘‘por dios señores que son malos termynos que a un hombre como el s[eñ]or corral le traten asi no abiendo f[ec]ho nyngun agravio.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1608–9, ‘‘q[uerell]a fran[cis]co corral sacristan.’’

notes to pages 144 – 50

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140. ‘‘Porque fuera grave nota en un hombre de pundonor, bolver pies atrás, cediendo al que le impide su camino.’’ Núñez de Castro, Sólo Madrid es corte, 471–73. 141. ‘‘Y como es licito, por defender su capa, el reñir, con quien intenta despojarle.’’ Ibid., 471–73. 142. ‘‘P[ar]a que passaban tantas bezes.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] garzia y otros sobre la herida de ju[an] g[arci]a ataonero y de otro.’’ 143. The shepherds, ‘‘porque no se yban acostar.’’ Galán, ‘‘porque no se ban ellos.’’ The shepherds, ‘‘serenissimos cornudos.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘herida de andres galan.’’ 144. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1608–9, ‘‘q[uerella] fran[cis]co b[a]r[tolo]me cid y otros.’’ 145. AGS: CC, leg. 2569, no. 65. 146. Nueva recopilación, fol. 165r. 147. ‘‘Dissimular lo que en un colérico sería ocasión bastante para reñir.’’ Covarrubias, Tesoro, 247. 148. This case also appears in chapter 2, note 103. Rubio, ‘‘bellacas burlas son estas.’’ Villareal, ‘‘perdonadme Juan Rubio.’’ Rubio stated in the private pardon and fee de amistades that they were ‘‘burlandose con el.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] de villareall y otros 1627.’’ 149. Gómez, ‘‘Bete con dios hermano que me quies.’’ Guerrero, ‘‘Que hay Juan.’’ Guerrero testified that ‘‘no metio mano a ella por entender que yba de burla.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1625–27, ‘‘de ofi[ci]o q[uerell]a ju[an] gomez el mozo— herida 1626 yevenes.’’ 150. ‘‘Paz paz.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘jusepe serrano fr[ancis]co gonzales.’’ 151. Puente, Tratado de la perfecion, book 1, 408–9. 152. Manzano, ‘‘tengo de ver si es valiente este borracho.’’ The companion, ‘‘donde bais con espada.’’ Manzano, ‘‘a darle a este dos çintarazos a ver si regaña.’’ Toledo, ‘‘ay me a muerto.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2565, no. 14. 153. Ponce, ‘‘bayase nora mala.’’ The soldier, ‘‘sino fuera mi soldado le diera de çintaraços con esta espada.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2570, no. 37. 154. ‘‘Todos son muy amigos.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1646–50, ‘‘q[uerell]a pedro de burgos y al[fons]o de alcaçar.’’ 155. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1609–10, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] bap[tis]ta.’’ 156. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘caveza de prozesso q[uerell]a p[edr]o ruiz calero hijo de fran[cis]co ruiz calero.’’ 157. ‘‘Se picaron.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘caveza de proçeso contra fr[ancis]co de la cruz y consortes.’’ 158. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerell]a 1627 anton esclabo de maestro parraga.’’ 159. AGS: CC, leg. 2559, no. 13. 160. ‘‘Ay me an muerto.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2560, no. 37. 161. ‘‘Ocasion de ruydos y pendencias.’’ Bobadilla, Politíca para corregidores, 564– 65. 162. For England, see Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination; Amussen, An Or-

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163.

164. 165.

166.

167.

168.

169.

170.

171.

172.

notes to pages 150 – 53

dered Society; and Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England. For France, see Farr, Hands of Honor. For England, see Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation; Shepard, ‘‘Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy’’; Shoemaker, ‘‘Reforming Male Manners’’; and Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination. For France, see Farr, Hands of Honor. Farr, Hands of Honor; Stuart, Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts. For England, see Kent, The English Village Constable. For France, see Greenshields, An Economy of Violence. For Italy, see Hughes, ‘‘Fear and Loathing in Bologna and Rome.’’ For England, see Shepard, Meanings of Manhood. For Latin America, see Johnson, ‘‘Dangerous Words, Provocative Gestures, and Violent Acts.’’ For Europe in general, see Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 178– 204. For festive occasions leading to unruliness and violence, see Le Roy Ladurie, Carnival in Romans; Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France; and Underdown, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion. Shepard, ‘‘From Anxious Patriarchs to Refined Gentlemen?’’; Capp, ‘‘The Double Standard Revisited’’; Wiesner, ‘‘Wandervogels and Women’’; Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination, 211–12; and Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre, 75–104. For the centrality of gambling to male sociability in Italy, see Walker, ‘‘Gambling and Venetian Noblemen.’’ See Tosh, ‘‘What Should Historians Do with Masculinity?’’ Furthermore, some historians warn against seeing identity in the early modern period as a single, unitary entity. See, for example, Sabean, Power in the Blood; Davis, ‘‘Boundaries and the Sense of Self ’’; and Ong, Orality and Literacy. For example, two studies of Spanish reputation that focus more heavily on sex are Edward Behrend-Martínez, Unfit for Marriage, and Dyer, ‘‘Seduction by Promise of Marriage.’’ Three scholars in particular have influenced my thoughts on honor and humiliation: Rosenwein, ‘‘Even the Devil (Sometimes) Has Feelings’’ and ‘‘Identity and Emotions in the Early Middle Ages,’’ which argues that premodern Europeans defined their ‘‘selves’’ by attempting to live up to ideals and su√ered humiliation and crisis if they could not live up to those ideals; Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments, which argues that the whole point of honor was to avoid humiliation; and Gilligan, Violence, which argues that violent acts committed by sociopaths today are best understood as attempts to undo humiliation. See also Miller, Humiliation and Other Essays. ‘‘Hombres muy honrrados y quietos y paçificos buenos [christ]ianos y temerosos de dios quitados de ruydos y quistiones y que no acostumbran a andar de noche a deshera ni dar nota en el lugar sino muy buen buen [sic] exemplo.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘por las preguntas siguientes se examinen los testigos que se preguntaren por p[ar]te de juan lopez portillo y juan de la calle de abila . . .’’ ‘‘Son notorios del d[ic]ho fran[cis]co garcia el gordillo el qual es hombre facinerosso y de mal bibir y ue a todos los lugares da escandalo acompañandose

notes to pages 153 – 61

173. 174.

175. 176. 177. 178. 179.

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con los gitanos y haciendo hurtos y estorsiones y otras muchas cosas como es notorio.’’ AHN: Consejos, leg. 5576, no. 4. ‘‘Moro judio ladron infame.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1608–9, ‘‘q[uerella] mari prieta.’’ Michael Herzfeld writes that for twentieth-century rural Cretan men, ‘‘the successful performance of selfhood depends upon an ability to identify the self with larger categories of identity.’’ I believe that there is something similar in the way that early modern Castilian men identified their selves with the symbols of masculinity and the performance of male roles. Herzfeld, The Poetics of Manhood, 10–11. AGS: CC, leg. 2563, no. 6. ‘‘Diese una buelta y que sino savia bailar mejor paraq[ue] baylaba.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2569, no. 5. Calderón, El postrer duelo de España, 15–18. Christian objection to dueling in England was also ine√ectual. Andrew, ‘‘The Code of Honour and Its Critics.’’ Luis de Granada, Libro de oración, 73.

chapter 5. women 1. A ‘‘tabla’’ or ‘‘tableza’’ is what Maria Fernández used to strike Ana Díaz. Fernández, ‘‘myra que me aber hecho que mas sangre tengo yo que dio bos.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘q[uerella] m[ari]a gomez ana diaz.’’ 2. Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville, especially 6–7, 178. See also Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America. 3. Pitt-Rivers, ‘‘Honour and Social Status.’’ For a good summary of what this tradition includes, see Gilmore, ‘‘Anthropology of the Mediterranean Area.’’ 4. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 34. 5. ‘‘¡O quién pudiera, ah, cielos, / con licencia de su honor / hacer aquí sentimientos! / ¡O quién pudiera dar voces, / y romper con el silencio / cárceles de nieve, donde / está aprisionado el fuego, / que ya, resulto en cenizas, / es ruina que está diciendo: / ‘Aquí fue amor’! Mas ¿qué digo? / ¿Qué es esto, cielos, qué es esto? / Yo soy quien soy. Vuelva el aire / los repetidos acentos / que llevó; porque aun perdidos, / no es bien que publiquen ellos / lo que yo debo callar, / porque ya, con más acuerdo, / ni para sentir soy mía; / y solamente me huelgo / de tener hoy que sentir, / por tener en mis deseos / que vencer; pues no hay virtud / sin experiencia. Perfeto / está el oro en el crisol, / . . . así mi honor en sí mismo / se acrisola, cuando llego / a vencerme, pues no fuera / sin experiencias perfeto.’’ Calderón, El médico de su honra, act I, lines 122–152. 6. ‘‘Llamarle quiero, que vuela / con saña más vengativa, / y me dé muerte.’’ Calderón, El alcalde de Zalamea, act III, lines 63–65, p. 137. 7. For a critical evaluation of the impact, or lack of one, made by these two writers see Poska, Women and Authority, 2–9. 8. Astete, Tratado del govierno de la familia, 157–59, 186–92. For the age of donzellas, Cerda, Vida política de todos los estados de mugeres, fol. 8v.

266

notes to pages 161 – 64

9. ‘‘Conviene que las vírgenes pongan grandíssima guardia asus ojos y oídos, pues por ellos el deshonesto amor acostumbra infundir y llevar hasta el coraçón su veneno.’’ Espinosa, Diálogo en laude de las mujeres, 215. 10. ‘‘ ‘La muger y la trucha, por la boca se prende.’ ’’ Ibid., 220–22. 11. The connection between doors and women’s bodies is also noted in E. Cohen, ‘‘Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome.’’ 12. Guevara, Á los recien casados, 22. 13. Cerda, Vida política de todos los estados de mugeres, fol. 34v–35r. 14. Ibid., fol. 39v. 15. ‘‘Pendón real de todas las otras virtudes, porque si a ésta tiene, nadie busca las otras; y si no la tiene, nadie mira las otras.’’ Vives, Instrucción de la mujer cristiana, 123. 16. ‘‘Deshonrra’’ and ‘‘infamia.’’ Ibid., fol. 7v. 17. ‘‘¿Qué dolor es el de los padres? ¿Qué infamia de los parientes? ¿Qué tristeza de los amigos? ¿Qué gemidos de los familiares? ¿Qué lágrimas de los que la criaron? . . . Considera, pues, triste, considera (no así ligeramente) las maldiciones, los reproches, los denuestos de los padres, de los familiares, de los amigos y vecinos blasfemando a tu maldad y la hora en que naciste, para poner infamia en casa de los tuyos, vergüenza en los que te criaron, mancilla en tu honra, dolor en tu vida, pena en tu alma.’’ Vives, Instrucción de la mujer cristiana, 76–77. Allyson Poska quotes this same passage in Poska, Women and Authority, 2–9. 18. Luis de León, La perfecta casada, 78–81. 19. Ibid., 179–83. 20. Vives, Instrucción de la mujer cristiana, 287–96. 21. ‘‘La muger y la gallina por andar se pierde aína.’’ Espinosa, Diálogo en laude de las mujeres, 220–22. 22. Vives, Instrucción de la mujer cristiana, 211–12. 23. ‘‘Fama y estimacion.’’ Astete, Tratado del govierno de la familia, 189. 24. Luis de León, La perfecta casada, 89–90. 25. ‘‘Que el hombre, por ser hombre, abástale que sea bueno, aunque no lo parezca; mas la muger, por ser muger, no abasta que lo sea, sino que lo parezca.’’ Ibid., 373. 26. ‘‘Yo confieso que es más peligroso para la conciencia, empero digo que es menos dañoso para la honrra, en que sea la muger secretamente desonesta, que no que sea públicamente desvergonzada.’’ Guevara, ‘‘Letra para Mosén Puche,’’ 371. This is simply a di√erent edition of Á los recien casados. 27. These conclusions build on the work of other historians of early modern Spain, notably Poska, ‘‘Elusive Virtue,’’ and Dyer, ‘‘Seduction by Promise of Marriage.’’ 28. These cases include depositions taken from witnesses and often from the victims and perpetrators of the crimes. The 313 cases were selected from a total of 550 that contain violent conflict from the years 1600–1650. The cases were chosen on the basis of their relevance to the topic of interpersonal con-

notes to pages 165 – 67

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34. 35.

36. 37.

38.

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flict, so that criminal cases that revolve principally around theft, for example, were not included. For a survey of the attitudes toward women in prescriptive literature, see Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville, and also Dopico Black, Perfect Wives, Other Women, 17–18, 48–108. Recent research suggests, however, that in practice the cloistered seclusion of women was not demanded of noble women either. Nader, Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain. Even in convents, the one place where women were meant to be literally enclosed, such strict seclusion did not really occur. Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain. For a discussion of the role of sexuality in women’s reputations—and its malleability—in Italy, see E. Cohen, ‘‘The Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi,’’ and Cavallo and Cerutti, ‘‘Female Honor and the Social Control of Reproduction.’’ Garthine Walker found that housewifery was an important component of English wives’ self-worth, and that ‘‘idle housewife’’ was a serious insult, in Walker, ‘‘Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour.’’ ‘‘Una grande puta’’; ‘‘manchar el honor y honrra’’; ‘‘siendo como es muger honrrada de tales deudos e parientes.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘antonio f[er]n[and]ez q[uerell]a la guzmana.’’ Laura Gowing has found similar usage of the term whore in early modern London. Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 90–94. A ‘‘palo’’ is what Palaçios used to strike Maragon. Palaçios (according to Maragon’s testimony), ‘‘por que a dicho quella a entrado a sus casas a comer con su marido y q[ue] si ella descia que mentia como puta probada.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerell]a juana de palacios.’’ In fact, the phrase ‘‘to speak with’’ (hablar con) could be a euphemism for sex. Dyer, ‘‘Heresy and Dishonor,’’ 118. ‘‘Mientras bos estais trabajando tiene conbersaçion con los clerigos del lug[a]r.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘de gaspar rodrig[ue]z contra ju[an] nieto carretero y mateo su hijo.’’ Mary Elizabeth Perry focuses on how women from Seville supported and managed their households, frequently in the absence of men, who had left Seville for the New World. Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville. For elsewhere in Spain see Casey, Early Modern Spain, 199–206, 212–14. For similar treatments of women’s economic activity and the family see Wiesner, Working Women in Renaissance Germany; Hill, Women, Work and Sexual Politics; Tilly and Scott, Women, Work, and Family; and Hufton, The Prospect before Her, 155–76. In Italy, historians have emphasized how by exercising control over their dowries, both while living and through their wills, women were able to exert economic influence in an informal way despite the fact that in theory men were supposed to make decisions about property. For example, see Cohn, Women in the Streets, 6–11, and Chojnacki, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice, 11–20.

268

notes to pages 167 – 71

39. See Coolidge, ‘‘ ‘Neither Dumb, Deaf, nor Destitute of Understanding’ ’’; Nader, Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain; Dillard, Daughters of the Reconquest; Chojnacki, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice; 11–20; and Cohn, Women in the Streets, 6–11. 40. See Taylor, ‘‘Credit, Debt, and Honor in Castile.’’ For an overview of the subject, see Jordan, Women and Credit in Pre-Industrial and Developing Societies. For the importance of credit in Spain more generally, see Phillips, Ciudad Real, 60–64; outside of Spain, see Ago, Economia Barocca. 41. ‘‘Era una bellaca y que aso las se berian que a fee que se la abia de pagar.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerell]a catalina maestra.’’ 42. Gómez, ‘‘quien le metia a el en aquello’’; Martín, ‘‘yo me meto en ello que soys una puerca.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerell]a tomas m[art]yn.’’ 43. Casey, Early Modern Spain, 200–201. 44. AGS: CC, leg. 2560, no. 24. 45. AGS: CC, leg. 2563, no. 18. 46. Peña, ‘‘mulata desbergonjada perra morisca.’’ Palacios, ‘‘picaro cabron.’’ AHN: Consejos, leg. 5576, no. 7. 47. For example, see Jaime Contreras, Sotos contra Riquelmes. 48. Esteban allegedly called Ruis ‘‘hijo de puta,’’ ‘‘cochina,’’ ‘‘señora mala,’’ and ‘‘mestiça,’’ then he said, ‘‘Boto a [crist]o que la tengo de dar mas coçes que a su hijo.’’ Ruiz allegedly called Esteban ‘‘bellaco’’ and ‘‘tonto desatino.’’ While mestiça or mestiza was a common word in Latin America used to designate someone of mixed racial heritage, it is unclear what precisely was meant by the term here, deep in central Castile. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘poder q[uerell]a dio al[ons]o carrasco a fran[cis]co lopez.’’ Another case involving the two families is AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘p[edr]o estevan q[uerell]a al[ons]o carrasco y su hijo.’’ 49. Among anthropologists and historians who have studied the feud and vendetta in the Mediterranean, the consensus is that feuds were for men to carry out. Sometimes women were acceptable as actors or victims in the vengeful violence of feuding, but only on rare occasions, and the normative explanations articulated in feuding societies did not include the participation of women. For example, Jacob Black-Michaud notes that women frequently caused feuds among men through disgraceful acts, usually related to sex, but ‘‘in no feuding society in the Mediterranean and the Middle East are they regarded as legitimate targets for vengeance.’’ See Black-Michaud, Cohesive Force, 217–20; Boehm, Blood Revenge, 111–12; Herzfeld, The Poetics of Manhood, 51–84; and Wilson, Feuding, Conflict and Banditry, 215–23. 50. ‘‘Hixo de un negro . . . de granada.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘querella de fran[cis]co de la cruz.’’ Two other cases also refer to the quarrel between the two families: AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘1629 yebenes en la ciu[da]d de toledo a diez y n[uev]e dias de mes . . . ,’’ and AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘cabe de processo q[uerell]a fran[cisc]o de la cruz ju[an] serrano p[edr]o r[odrigue]s.’’

notes to pages 171 – 75

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51. Ximénez, ‘‘mire que la quiero dezir’’; ‘‘para que yba en casa del s[eño]r alcalde a pedir unos dineros que devia al d[ic]ho mi marido.’’ Urueña, ‘‘venaca martin deja a esa picara borracha benediça.’’ Ibáñez complained that Urueña ‘‘me tiro los canellos’’ and ‘‘me hiço pedaços la toca y me arrostro,’’ and that twenty days earlier Urueña had said, ‘‘Era una grandissima bellaca desollada,’’ and ‘‘me havia de haçer cruçar la cara y sacarme la lenga.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘q[uerell]a jusepa ibanez.’’ 52. ‘‘Dala dala’’; ‘‘hera una grandissima bellaca enrredadora desalindadora alcaguetona.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1646–50, ‘‘querella contra manuel del alamo y angela g[arci]a su muger.’’ 53. ‘‘Unos judios perros moros ladrones y gente ynfame.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–26, ‘‘q[uerell]a catalina de torres y mariana de torres.’’ 54. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘q[uerell]a contra m[ari]a hernandez mujer de eujenio calbo y m[ari]a su hija.’’ 55. Alfaro testified that he ‘‘entendi que la mug[e]r abia sacado espada al’’ her husband. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerella] anton nieto fra[ncis]co estevan bentura pobre.’’ 56. ‘‘Quito la bara por anbos manos le quebro la bara.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1608–9, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] de azena hijo de ju[an] del carpio—m[ari]a crespa su mug[e]r.’’ Garthine Walker has described this pattern in early modern England, where women staged ‘‘rescues’’ against the constabulary, either freeing their husbands as they were taken o√ to jail or preventing the authorities from seizing goods from the house. Walker, ‘‘Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour,’’ 235–45. 57. AGS: CC, leg. 2566, no. 8. 58. AGS: CC, leg. 2556, no. 20. 59. AGS: CC, leg. 2559, no. 1. 60. Salcedo asked ‘‘por amor de dios la recogiese por aquella noche.’’ The tavern keeper responded that ‘‘no pareçia bien que las mugeres casadas andubiesen fuera de su casa a quella oras.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2569, no. 2. 61. One’s performance as a housewife constituted part of a woman’s honor in early modern England, according to Garthine Walker, ‘‘Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour,’’ 238–39. 62. AGS: CC, leg. 2565, no. 1. 63. AGS: CC, leg. 2569, no. 29. 64. ‘‘Burlando con.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1622–23, ‘‘q[uerell]a anton esclavo del m[aestr]o parraga.’’ 65. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘causa pellezcos q[uerell]a ju[an] diaz p[edr]o de madrid y tomas hijo denton f[ernand]ez gabriel hijo de al[ons]o estevan sevastian hijo de anton portillo lucas hijo de al[ons]o barba.’’ 66. AGS: CC, leg. 2569, no. 65. 67. Soto, Obligaciones de todos los estados, fol. 129v. 68. Guevara, Á los recien casados, 26–27. 69. Mexia, Saludable instrucion del estado de matrimonio, fol. 201r.

270

notes to pages 175 – 80

70. ‘‘Piensa ahora qué burlas, qué escarnios, qué cuentos sacarán de ti las otra vírgenes, que solían comptir contigo en bondad. ¿Qué harán de volverte las espadas tus amigas?’’ Vives, Instrucción de la mujer cristiana, 76–77. 71. For a detailed analysis of houses and space in early modern Italy, see Cohen and Cohen, ‘‘Open and Shut.’’ 72. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘q[uerell]a m[ari]a gomez la montera’’; AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘causa pellezcos q[uerell]a ju[an] diaz p[edr]o de madrid y tomas hijo denton f[ernand]ez gabriel hijo de al[ons]o estevan sevastian hijo de anton portillo lucas hijo de al[ons]o barba.’’ 73. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘q[uerella] m[ari]a gomez ana diaz.’’ 74. AGS: CC, leg. 2570, no. 24. 75. AGS: CC, leg. 2567, no. 18. 76. AGS: CC, leg. 2570, no. 46. 77. AGS: CC, leg. 2560, no. 12. 78. AGS: CC, leg. 2560, no. 24; AHN: Consejos, leg. 5576, no. 7. 79. Pitt-Rivers, ‘‘Honour and Social Status,’’ 42. 80. See note 49 above. 81. E. Cohen, ‘‘Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome’’; Gowing, Domestic Dangers; Walker, ‘‘Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour.’’ 82. AGS: CC, leg. 2569, no. 12. 83. Not all the witnesses reported the demand by Urosa for Montero to avenge her ill treatment. AGS: CC, leg. 2571, no. 18. 84. ‘‘Muy malas palabras desonorosas contra su buena reputaçion y quiso poner manos en ella’’; ‘‘a avido muy grande nota y escandalo nota y mormuracion’’; ‘‘mug[e]r honrada onesta y recogida buena [christ]iana de buena bida y fama y cosunbres.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerell]a m[ari]a f[ernande]z muger de andres g[arci]a carrasco.’’ 85. López de Vega, El perfecto señor, 42–43. 86. ‘‘Gente honrados de buena bida e fama.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘q[uerell]a jusepa ibanez.’’ 87. ‘‘Tomo un garrote y la dio de palos con el llamando la puta probada y que era una pelleza que estaba en la mançebia de suerte que la trato muy mal.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1609–10, ‘‘maria gonçalez q[uerell]a contra catalina lopez mug[e]r de carrasco.’’ 88. ‘‘Por la quitar su buena onrra y fama y opinion,’’ she publicly ‘‘a dicha mi muger es rruyn muger y questa amanzebada.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerella] maria lopez.’’ 89. Perhaps, as in early modern London, women took it upon themselves to enforce sexual propriety among the women of their communities. Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 101–2. 90. ‘‘Bellaca ladrona.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘q[uerell]a de m[ari]a gomes contra ana r[odrigue]s mug[e]r de p[edr]o m[arti]n retam[e]ro.’’ 91. ‘‘Era un grandisimo bellaco y mal onbre y que le tenian usurpadado doç-

notes to pages 181 – 86

92.

93. 94. 95.

96.

97. 98. 99.

100. 101.

102. 103. 104. 105.

106. 107. 108. 109.

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ientas cabras con sus crias’’; ‘‘que enmalos ynfiernos andiese su alma.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerell]a m[ari]a lopez.’’ ‘‘Un soplon disfamador de mugeres y hombres honrrados.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1646–50, ‘‘querella dada por marcos de villano vecino de el lugar de yebenes q[uerell]a catalina martin mug[e]r de fran[cis]co g[arci]a albanil.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘q[uerella] juan estebaniot[e] bagonan.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘al[ons]o xill.’’ López, ‘‘es muy buen [christ]iano y de buena bida y fama y que no aven d[ic]has las palabras que se an preguntado.’’ Ruedas, ‘‘con animo de ynjuriar y afrentar.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerell]a m[ari]a lopez.’’ ‘‘La abia de echar del lugar por deslenguada’’; ‘‘calla que andais buscando buestro marido por los caminos.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1646–50, ‘‘querella dada por marcos de villano vecino de el lugar de yebenes q[uerell]a catalina martin mug[e]r de fran[cis]co g[arci]a albanil.’’ Ramírez, ‘‘ydos a marx[aliz]a a hartaras de fornycar.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623– 35, ‘‘q[uerell]a al[ons]o ramirez.’’ ‘‘Muy malas palabras . . . tocante a su onra.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘criminal q[uerell]a maria rodriguez.’’ Mariana, ‘‘le ensenase arener criança que la abia llamado puta.’’ López Delgado, ‘‘a lo menos si el muchcho lo dixo no myntio.’’ Mariana, ‘‘sucio.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘q[uerella] fran[cis]co lopez delgado.’’ Bermejo, ‘‘una suzia y que mentia.’’ Fernández, ‘‘rico abariento’’; ‘‘comia los pobres.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] bermexo.’’ ‘‘Coletos’’ were what Eugenio was trying to sell, and a ‘‘serijo’’ is what Balboa threw at Ana. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1646–50, ‘‘querella dada por francisco martin guerrero por unas palabras que tubo con ana garcia su muger q[uerell]a juan de balboa vecino de yebenes.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2567, no. 18. ‘‘Que mentia como un cabron.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2570, no. 21. ‘‘Una satisfazion onrada’’; ‘‘mire lo que dize.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] guerrero.’’ ‘‘No los queria dar.’’ Nieto claimed that he did not strike her and that she had threatened to claim he had beaten her if he did not pay, but she did seem to have bruises on her body, suggesting that the beating did take place. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614–15, ‘‘q[uerella] juan nieto.’’ The cartwright Juan Nieto appeared in two cases in chapter 2 as well. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1609–10, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] de sevilla de bern[a]l.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘q[uerella] estevan ruiz paninos blas ruiz.’’ Ibáñez’s husband, however, issued the final pardon of her attackers. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34 ‘‘q[uerell]a jusepa ibanez.’’ De los Ángeles, ‘‘fr[ancis]ca de palasios la qual tiene la culpa de q[u]e susediera la pendencia q[u]e sino fuera por la susodha no obiera pesadumbre ni susediera cosa ning[un]a.’’ Gomez, ‘‘avia desonrado a su mug[e]r’’; ‘‘dio por amor de su mug[e]r.’’ AHN: Consejos, leg. 5567, no. 7.

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notes to pages 186 – 93

110. ‘‘Bellaca para que jurate contra my mug[e]r.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘querella que dio ju[an] de cast[ane]da de pedro de losa molinero.’’ 111. Fernández del Pozo, ‘‘bellaca ynfame.’’ Fernández, ‘‘tener muchos pendençias con otras perssonas por tratar de ordinario mal de palabra y de obra.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerell]a lucia f[ernand]ez del pozo.’’ 112. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1622–23, ‘‘q[uerell]a sevastian lopez.’’ Also in Yébenes, in 1615, Juana de Palacios pardoned her brother-in-law Francisco Sánchez for having killed her husband, provided that he never enter the house of María Palacios, Juana’s mother and Sánchez’s mother-in-law. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614–15, ‘‘q[uerell]a fran[cis]co sanchez.’’ 113. AHN: Consejos, leg. 5576, no. 12. 114. For a further discussion of the gap between expectations and behavior in courts of law, see Stretton, Women Waging Law. 115. ‘‘Que me quieres ynfame bete con dios de mi cassa no basta la deshonrra que me tienes dada.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘q[uerell]a fran[sic]co abad.’’ 116. Mexia, Saludable instrucion del estado de matrimonio, fol. 36r–36v. 117. ‘‘Ni la ha de cerra solamente la llave con que el padre, o la madre cierran las puertas, o las ventanas, sino el amor de honestad ha de ser la llave que la ha de guardar.’’ Astete, Tratado del govierno de la familia, 193–94. 118. Celso, Las leyes de todos los reynos de Castilla, fol. 149r. 119. ‘‘El que honrrare alos otros honrrase a si mesmo.’’ Ibid., fol. 175r. 120. Shepard, Meanings of Manhood, 133. 121. ‘‘No le debo nada porq[ue] si yo le debiera alg[un]a cosa no abia de dar lug[a]r a que me lo pidiera.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] camacho.’’ 122. Tomás A. Mantecón argues that the entire social order in early modern Spain rested on the voluntary subjection of some to others, making the tools of coercion seldom necessary. Mantecón, Conflictividad y disciplinamiento social. 123. My understanding of honor and shame as concealment and self-control derives from Rosenwein, ‘‘Even the Devil (Sometimes) Has Feelings’’ and ‘‘Identity and Emotions in the Early Middle Ages’’; Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments; Gilligan, Violence; and Reddy, The Invisible Code. 124. Stuart Carroll points out that the church and churchyard was one of the only places where a woman could take revenge publicly. Carroll, Blood and Violence, 246–47. 125. Garthine Walker, ‘‘Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour.’’ For feuding, see Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order, 10–12, and Gowing, Domestic Dangers. See also Jordan, Women and Credit. 126. E. Cohen, ‘‘Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome’’; E. Cohen, ‘‘No Longer Virgins’’; Ferrante, ‘‘Honor Regained.’’ 127. See especially Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order, 75–112. For women’s ability to defend their own honor more generally, see Gowing, Domestic Dangers; Capp, When Gossips Meet; and Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination. 128. Lipsett-Rivera, ‘‘A Slap in the Face of Honor.’’

notes to pages 193 – 98

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129. Perhaps wealthy urban women in Spain truly were subject to near-complete enclosure. See Cruz, ‘‘Studying Gender in the Spanish Golden Age.’’ chapter 6. adultery and violence 1. ‘‘Que mal que el honor estraga, / no es menester que se haga / porque basta que se diga.’’ Lope de Vega, El castigo sin venganza, act III, lines 2549–51, p. 105. 2. ‘‘¡Ay, honor, fiero enemigo! / ¿Quién fue el primero que dio / tu ley al mundo, y que fuese / mujer quien en sí tuviese / tu valor, y el hombre no? / Pues sin culpa el más honrado / te puede perder, honor, / bábaro legislador / fue tu inventor, no letrado.’’ Lope de Vega, El castigo sin venganza, act III, lines 2811–19, p. 114. 3. ‘‘Importava a su reputaçion y a la vida de una señora principal.’’ AHN: Consejos, leg. 5576, no. 10, fol. 17v. 4. Nevertheless, for an intriguing look at an actual case of a man accused of murdering his wife, see Mantecón, La muerte de Antonia Isabel Sánchez. For adultery and violence in early modern England, see Turner, Fashioning Adultery. 5. For wife-murder as a way to combine already existing themes, see Stroud, Fatal Union, 141–42. Melveena McKendrick has gone so far as to suggest that the real connection between honor in drama and honor in life was that honor in drama was really a stand-in for concerns about limpieza de sangre (purity of blood), and that the real horror of being cuckolded was that Jewish or Muslim blood might be introduced into a man’s lineage: ‘‘The honour/vengeance motif in the wife-murder plays and others mimics not the sexual mores of the age . . . but the psychology of the age’s obsession with limpieza de sangre.’’ McKendrick, ‘‘Honour/Vengeance in the Spanish ‘Comedia.’ ’’ For a further discussion of the honor code in Castilian drama and how scholars have treated it, see also McKendrick, Identities in Crisis. 6. Kuehn, Law, Family, and Women, especially 3–4. 7. For a discussion of this concern, see McKendrick, ‘‘Honour/Vengeance in the Spanish ‘Comedia,’ ’’ 313–19, and Dopico Black, Perfect Wives, Other Women, 114. 8. Nueva recopilación, fol. 192v–93v. 9. Celso, Las leyes de todos los reynos de Castilla, fol. x(v); Pradilla Barnuevo, Tratado y summa de todas las leyes, fol. 12r–14r 10. Azpilcueta Navarro, Manual de confesores y penitents, 149. 11. ‘‘La gente popular tiene ya por averiguado, que si uno toma a su muger con otro, los puede matar sin culpa.’’ Pedraza, Summa de casos de consciencia, fol. 39v. 12. Cerda, Vida política de todos los estados de mugeres, fol. 391r–395r. 13. Guevara, Á los recien casados, 37–38. 14. Puente, Tratado de la perfecion en todos los estados, book 2, 229.

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notes to pages 198 – 201

15. ‘‘Cortesia’’; ‘‘compañera.’’ Cerda, Vida política de todos los estados de mugeres, fol. 347r–398v, 409r–415v. 16. ‘‘De aquí nacen las quejas, las voces, el aborrecimiento, la continua sospecha, y muchas veces la muerte. Esto es verdad porque habemos leído y oído decir, y (lo que es peor) cada día acontece ser las mujeres cruelmente degolladas y ahogadas de sus maridos por celos.’’ Vives, Instrucción de la mujer cristiana, 271. 17. ‘‘Fue por causa onorosa.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2572, no. 27. 18. ‘‘Tubo ocassion sufiçiente en darle las d[ic]has heridas por haverle este que declara ofendido al sussodicho en su onrra.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2570, no. 43. 19. For the importance of a good death in early modern Castile, see Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory. 20. ‘‘Pena de muerte de garote y puesto y asido en un acero con un perro y un gato y echado en el rio y primeor de ser puesto el cadaver sea encubado y cortar la caveza y puesta en el rollo en frente donde cometio el delito.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2562, no. 28, fol. 34r. For more on punishments see Pike, ‘‘Penal Practices in Early Modern Spain.’’ 21. For a comprehensive survey of how scholars have understood the family, see Sabean, Property, Production, and Family, 88–101, and Medick and Sabean, ‘‘Interest and Emotion in Family and Kinship Studies.’’ See also Casey, The History of the Family. 22. For a magisterial treatment of how European family and kin relationships are connected to the culture in which they exist and change over time, see Sabean, Property, Production, and Family, and Sabean, Kinship in Neckarhausen. 23. Sabean, Kinship in Neckarhausen, 11–12, and Howell, The Marriage Exchange. 24. For a survey of Castilian property practices, see Reher, Perspectives on the Family, 47–51, 64–72. 25. Giovanni Levi has found that in the early modern Italian Piedmont, business relationships among an extended family could be very complex. Levi, Inheriting Power. 26. For comprehensive coverage of the interplay between women, marriage, and family in Galicia, see Poska, Women and Authority. 27. Casey finds that in societies where daughters inherit or are given a dowry, a woman’s birth family remains interested in her to a higher degree than in societies where women take no part of the family property with them. Casey, The History of the Family, 85. 28. Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros, 69. Edward Behrend-Martínez adds that in Spain there was real ambiguity over what was expected of the two partners in a marriage. Behrend-Martínez, ‘‘An Early Modern Spanish ‘Divorce Court.’ ’’ For more on the stresses put on marriage, see Casey, Family and Community, 121–25. 29. Thomas Kuehn has observed that in Renaissance Italy, ‘‘women were always ‘citizens’ of two families.’’ Kuehn, ‘‘Daughters, Mothers, Wives, and Widows.’’

notes to pages 201 – 6

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30. For example, historians have stressed women’s use of magic to influence men, especially in courtship and sex. See, for example, Ruggiero, Binding Passions, and Astarita, Village Justice. 31. Meyerson, The Muslims of Valencia, 236–54. For studies of the family in other parts of early modern Europe that displayed other forms of family dynamics di√erent from Castile, see Sabean, Property, Production, and Family, and the works he compares with his own findings for southwest Germany: Delille, Famille et Propriété dans le Royaume de Naples; Claverie and Lamaison, L’impossible Marriage; and Segalen, Fifteen Generations of Bretons. See also Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, The Tuscans and Their Families. 32. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘1634 en 7 de junio año 1634 domingo horgeta v[e]c[in]o deste lugar como mejor aya . . .’’ 33. ‘‘Hecho mal de querer nonbrar a su hermano por alguaçil mayor.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerella] eugenio h[ernand]ez.’’ 34. According to one witness, Hernández said Bujío and Cobo were ‘‘ladrones bellacos y que la querian quitar la haçienda que era suya.’’ According to the scribe, she was ‘‘diciendo lo heçien mal con ella en pedieles partiçion de lo que hera suyo y avia heredado y trabaxado ella y su marido los mal deçia por una pieza de casa que ella y su marido abian edificado y hincendose derrodillas dixo plega a dios que mal rayo desçilo cayga en quien me quire quitar lo que es myo e trabajado.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘q[uerell]a catalina h[ernand]ez.’’ 35. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1646–50, ‘‘de ofi[ci]o contra estevan paninas y g[?]tes.’’ 36. AHN: Consejos, leg. 5576, no. 12. 37. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1615–19, ‘‘q[uerell]a franc[cis]co hinoxossa.’’ 38. See Sabean, Property, Production and Family and Kinship in Neckarhausen for extended examinations of how the practice and understanding of family and kin relationships were steeped in both market and nonmarket exchanges. 39. Díaz, ‘‘que no se abian de labar en su casa.’’ Sánchez, ‘‘un borracho ynfame bellaco.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614–15, ‘‘q[uerell]a fran[cis]co sanchez.’’ 40. According to the accusation, Arroba ‘‘avia menaçado y desafiado’’ his brotherin-law. According to Bermejo, he told Arroba, ‘‘Callase,’’ and ‘‘Tuviese respecto a los hombres onrrados,’’ to which Arroba became ‘‘alborotado y colerico.’’ Arroba claimed he told Muñoz, ‘‘Muy bien lo hiço su m[erc]d conmigo quando me tuvo presso sin culpa,’’ to which Muñoz responded, ‘‘Alguna culpa que tenia,’’ and then, ‘‘Vayase de ay quel un desvergonzado.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1609–10, ‘‘criminal de oficio de justicia contra joan de arrova.’’ 41. Hernández, ‘‘por amor de dios le dixesso a su marido que la tratasse bien.’’ Sánchez, ‘‘ques muger honrrada.’’ Duque, ‘‘quien le metia en esso.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2559, no. 20. 42. ‘‘Botado a dios avia de morir en sus manos.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2560, no. 15. 43. One witness reported Juan de Villareal saying, ‘‘Hablas ynfame.’’ According to another witness, Catalina Sánchez claimed that Pedro de Villareal had said, ‘‘Si tubiera su yerno honrra que avia de aver muerto a la d[ic]ha catalina

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44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

52. 53. 54.

55.

56.

notes to pages 207 – 12

sanchez.’’ According to a third witness, Juan de Villareal said ‘‘q[ue] pusiera remedio en su hija y sino q[ue] le pondrian ellas q[ue] por querelle [porque relle?] poner ellas abian tratado de bellacos.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘de ofi[ci]o sebastian del real 1627.’’ ‘‘Riñendo’’ is the word used for the original quarrel between Ysabel Ruiz and the Balboa brothers, which could mean a physical attack or simply a verbal exchange. Gabriel Ruiz, ‘‘picaros ladrones’’; ‘‘tiene por jente honrrada a’’ the Balboas; he only had a ‘‘disgusto’’ with them because they were ‘‘riñendo con la d[ic]ha su hermana y cuñada y porque los quito de pesadumbre se encontraron.’’ A witness heard the Balboas say that Ysabel ‘‘era una desbergonzada enredadora.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘q[uerell]a gabriel ruiz.’’ ‘‘Desbergonçada.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2557, no. 15. AGS: CC, leg. 2560, no. 3. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1623–25, ‘‘q[uerell]a pedro treviño fran[cis]co abad.’’ ‘‘Sin horden y lizenzia.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘q[uerell]a ju[an] lopez sevilla 1628.’’ ‘‘La quiere mucho y les muy obiediente.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614–15, ‘‘q[uerell]a al[ons]o miguel.’’ Bartolomé, ‘‘y v[uestra] m[erce]d quiere ser mi madre.’’ Gómez, ‘‘baya pregunteselo a su padre.’’ Bartolomé, ‘‘pues boto a dios q[ue] si se casa con el que la tenga de sacar el alma.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘de ofi[ci]o contra b[a]r[tolom]e y p[edr]o çid.’’ Gómez, ‘‘se fuesen con dios.’’ Cid, ‘‘abri o que boto a dios que os heche las puertas en el suelo.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerell]a pedro cid.’’ For conflict surrounding the prospect of marriage in early modern Spain, see Casey, Family and Community, and Lorenzo Pinar, ‘‘Actitudes violentas en torno a la formación y disolución del matrimonio.’’ Those who viewed her buttocks after the assault told her they were ‘‘mas negras que una pez.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2565, no. 22. E. Cohen, ‘‘The Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi,’’ 59–60. ‘‘Tomo a ynstar que le avia de soltar y diciendo y haciendo se le quito y la tendio entre dos tinaxas y mitiendola un pañuelo en la boca contra su boluntad y biolentamente la goco y extrupo y bisto esto esta que declara por estar afrentada y sin honrra dixo que se queria benir a el lug[a]r y a esta raçon respondio el d[ic]ho pedro calla no llores q[ue] yo me cassare contigo.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1629–30, ‘‘q[ue] pedro carrasco.’’ Sánchez, ‘‘juana como de berdad que tu andas a rebuelta con pedro carrasco.’’ Rodríguez, ‘‘miente que en lo dixere que yo no trato de esso.’’ De la Paz, ‘‘sino questaba desaçiendo algo’’; ‘‘beniaca pedro ay algo con esta moza.’’ Carrasco, ‘‘quel no abia tenido nada con ella que una borrachuela.’’ Ibid. For a discussion of the dynamics of rape, virginity, sex, and marriage in early modern Europe, see E. Cohen, ‘‘The Trials of Artemisia Gentileschi’’; Cohen, ‘‘No Longer Virgins’’; Farr, Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy; Ruggiero, Binding Passions; and Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros.

notes to pages 212 – 19

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57. AGS: CC, leg. 2560, no. 13. 58. ‘‘Alguna desgracia.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1611, ‘‘querella fran[cis]co çid q[uerell]a p[edr]o cid su hijo.’’ 59. ‘‘Cabron cornudo.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2572, no. 23. 60. ‘‘No riñera con el porq[u]e le tiene mucho respecto y es su padrino.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1609–10, ‘‘q[uerell]a roque zervantes.’’ 61. See, for example, Sabean, Kinship in Neckarhausen, 494–96, and Chojnacki, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice, 5. 62. ‘‘Ves aqui a tu sobrino.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2569, no. 40. 63. Edward Behrend-Martínez underlines the e√ects a bad marriage had on the community. Behrend-Martínez, ‘‘An Early Modern Spanish ‘Divorce Court.’ ’’ 64. Abigail Dyer has argued that husbands and fathers were able to find ways to avoid violent retribution against their wayward wives and daughters without losing their honor, often by casting the blame on the ‘‘seducing’’ lover who led the woman astray. Dyer, ‘‘Heresy and Dishonor.’’ 65. See Hacke, Women, Sex and Marriage, 210–16. 66. ‘‘Biolado mi cama y lecho.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1632–34, ‘‘q[uerell]a sebast[i]an rubio querella.’’ 67. ‘‘Sin tener atençion a las obligaciones que de su parte debia tener que se requiren en el estado de el matrimonio pospuesto el temor de dios y en gran daño de su conciençian demas de haber violado su misma honestidad con torpes y deshonestas açciones y solo a fin de quitarme mi honor y afrentarme.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1625–27, ‘‘mateo bega.’’ 68. AGS: CC, leg. 2570, no. 43. 69. AGS: CC, leg. 2562, no. 20. 70. Several villages in Castile are named ‘‘Torrubia,’’ and it is unclear which one is meant here. 71. AGS: CC, leg. 2565, no. 19. 72. AGS: CC, leg. 2563, no. 27. 73. According to the mother of de la Cruz de Silba, Alonso ‘‘andaban disfamanndo y desonrando’’ and ‘‘persuadendo la para que tratale con el carnalmente.’’ Also according to the mother’s testimony, Sánchez asked her stepsister, ‘‘Comadre mia como me enbio oy la niña a mi casa queriendo la tanto,’’ to which she replied, ‘‘Comadre porque la cure su padre que yo soy pobre.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2569, no. 3, fol. 2r–3r. 74. In seventeenth-century Somerset, women who committed adultery frequently cited violence or the threat of violence by their adulterous partner as their motivation. Quaife, Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives, 132. 75. ‘‘No le conocia.’’ ‘‘Puñetasso’’ was the word used to describe the blow Grande dealt to Alonso. AGS: CC, leg. 2572, no. 21. 76. ‘‘No tuvo culpa y que fue por causa onorosa.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2572, no. 27. 77. AGS: CC, leg. 2558, no. 11. 78. AGS: CC, leg. 2562, no. 28. 79. It is unclear whether Ciudad tried to poison his wife, failed, then slit her

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80. 81. 82.

83.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

notes to pages 219 – 28

throat, or whether her suspicion that he had poisoned her led him to suspect a reason why he should want to and then later kill her once he found out about the adultery. AGS: CC, leg. 2572, no. 5. ‘‘Fiadores.’’ Osuna, Norte de los estados, fol. 102r. AGS: CC, leg. 2568, no. 34. According to Porres’s servant, Porres said that ‘‘no gustava de la amistad del d[ic]ho don juan,’’ and the Navametes ‘‘la decian que era una tonta y que no savia estimar el bien que la avia venido.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2566, no. 18, fol. 18r– 19r. ‘‘Porque ay mugeres de servicio de tan poco temor de Dios, y de tan poca verguença, que si hallan entrada con las donzellas honradas les traen cartas, o recaudos malos, y son sus medianeras.’’ Astete, Tratado del govierno de la familia, 187–89. AHN: Consejos, leg. 5575, no. 5. ‘‘Amores de personas principales, o donzellas honradas, o religiosas, o de muger casada.’’ Villadiego, Instrucción política y práctica judicial, fol. 47r. ‘‘Traidor hombre.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2567, no. 21. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1614, ‘‘q[uerell]a di[eg]o de buytrago.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2570, no. 16. ‘‘Quiriendo la d[ic]ha muger a parlarse del d[ic]ho pecado.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerell]a pedro g[arci]a.’’ ‘‘Por no perder de su reputazion.’’ AHN: Consejos, leg. 5576 (unnumbered), fol. 4v–5r. ‘‘Que mentia como puta probada.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerell]a juana de palacios.’’ Women in early modern London tended to slander and assault other women, not their husbands, when their husbands committed adultery, using the term whore to keep the blame on women. Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 101–2.

chapter 7. conclusion 1. ‘‘Porque quiero hacerte sabidor, Sancho, que no afrentan las heridas que se dan con los instrumentos que acaso se hallan en las manos, y esto está en la ley del duelo, escrito por palabras expresas; que si el zapatero da a otro con la horma que tiene en la mano, puesto que verdadermente es de palo, no por eso se dirá que queda apaleado aquel a quien dio con ella. Digo esto porque no pienses que, puesto que quedamos desta pendencia molidos, quedamos afrentados, porque las armas que aquellos hombres traían, con que nos machacaron, no eran otras que sus estacas, y ninguno dellos, a lo que se me acuerda, tenía estoque, espada ni puñal.’’ Cervantes, Don Quijote, 164–65. 2. For the new ways of understanding how actors and cultural structure coexist, I have in mind chiefly Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice; Sahlins, Islands of History; and Ortner, High Religion. 3. ‘‘De quien.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1627–28, ‘‘p[edro] m[arti]nyuez molinero q[uerell]a m[ari]a lopez muger de al[ons]o blas.’’

notes to pages 228 – 31

4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

279

For honor and shame as emotions, see Reddy, The Invisible Code, 228–38. AMT: CC, Y leg. 1612–13, ‘‘q[uerella] ju[an] camacho.’’ AGS: CC, leg. 2563, no. 18. ‘‘ ‘Shame’ centers on the revelation of matters considered as unfit for wider consumption . . . ; ‘honor’ has to do with the aggressive presentation of an idealized self.’’ Herzfeld, Anthropology through the Looking-Glass, 64. ‘‘Por sser como soy onbre onrrado buen [Christ]iano temerosso de dios y de mi conçiencia y no a costumbrado a hacer semejantes bajeças y . . . decender como deçiendo de onrrados deudos y parientes ricos y prinçipales.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1613, ‘‘q[uerell]a ysavel çid.’’ ‘‘Mug[e]r honrada onesta y recogida buena [christ]iana de buena bida y fama y cosunbres.’’ AMT: CC, Y leg. 1620–21, ‘‘q[uerell]a m[ari]a f[ernande]z muger de andres g[arci]a carrasco.’’ For more on the idea of identifying one’s self with external models, see Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages. This tradition has continued despite Pierre Bourdieu’s warning against mistaking the notes that scholars take to translate our subjects’ behavior into something recognizable to us for the actual motivations for that behavior. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice. For a caution against seeing slaves participating in the culture of honor, however, see Blumenthal, ‘‘Defending Their Masters’ Honour.’’ See Davis, ‘‘Boundaries and the Sense of Self,’’ and Lindisfarne, ‘‘Variant Masculinities, Variant Virginities.’’ Herzfeld, The Poetics of Manhood, 10–11, 53.

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index

Entries marked with an asterisk may represent more than one person with identical names. *Abad, Francisco, 113, 188, 208 Abendaños, Baltasar, 208 Adultery: and honor, 2, 9, 16, 102, 110, 151, 160, 164, 214; and private pardons, 82; and law, 93; in literature, 194–96, 225, 231–32; and homicide, 199, 214–22, 224; casual accusations, 214–15; and material resources, 218–19, 223; and the community, 219–21, 223 A√ronts, 8, 155, 170, 173, 185; and duels, 18, 20, 22, 24, 30, 43, 54, 62; and confrontations, 34–35, 171, 192; types, 37; and the law, 76–77; and Christian morality, 106–8; and judicial o≈cials, 131; and sex, 165–66; by women, 178– 84 Aguilera, Melchor, 173 Aguinaga, Ana, 174 Aguinas, María, 174 Aguirre, Julián de, 169 Alamo, Manuel del, 171 Alcaldes, 13–14; directing investigations, 53, 74–75, 85, 186, 188; in literature, 65–66; and fiel del juzgado, 75, 85, 87,

91–92; misconduct of, 85–86, 130, 134–39, 151, 214; defiance of, 102–3, 111; not recognized, 130, 134; enforcing debts, 171, 185; and adultery, 220–21 Alciato, Andrea, 22–24, 27, 30, 34 Alegria, Pedro, 173 Alfaro, Alonso de, 60, 172 Algueta, Domingo, 53, 202 Aloçer, Ana de, 145–46, 175 Aloçer, Benito de, 146, 175 Alonso, Sebastián, 216–17, 219, 224 Amancebado, 40, 46, 93, 180 Anaya, Baltasar, 42, 132 Anaya Majano, Juan, 42–43, 79 Ángeles, María de los, 186 Ansa, Jerónimo de, 17–21, 25, 30, 70 Anthropology: and honor code 4–5, 7, 9, 19, 54, 64, 102, 155, 158, 162, 166, 180, 227, 230; revision of honor code, 5–6; and law, 67–68, 88, 227; and the feud, 170–71, 178 Aquilera, Francisca de, 222 Arias Castillo, Juan, 105 Ariñon, Alonso de, 60–62 Aristotle, 27, 106, 108 Arroba, Juan de, 204–5 Artal de Alagón, 22, 28, 30, 69–70, 107

298

index

Astete, Gaspar, 161, 163, 188, 190, 220 Ávila, Alonso de, 39, 78, 117 Ayala Nieto, Francisco de, 54 Azeña, Bartolomé de, 48, 55 Azeña, Juan de, 172 Azpilcueta Navarro, Martín de, 105–6, 197 Baez de Padrilla, Leandro, 195, 220 Balboa, Diego de, 47 Balboa, Francisco de, 39, 207 *Balboa, Juan de, 39, 184–85, 207 Ballesteros, Juan de, 59 Barba, Bartolomé, 39, 54 Barba, María, 41 Barba Cordovés, Pedro, 124, 214 Barba de Gaspar, Gerónimo, 47 Batista de Lanuza, Jerónimo, 63–64, 106, 109 Bautista, Juan, of Baena, 219 Bautista, Juan, of Yébenes, 57–58, 149 Beards, 46, 49, 62, 114, 143, 153 Beattie, John, 63 Bellaco, nature of insult, 38, 43–44, 62, 112 Bermejo, Don Carlos, 176, 184 Bermejo, Juan, 37, 80, 183–84 Bermejo, Juan ‘‘the Fat,’’ 129 Bermejo, Pedro ‘‘the Indian,’’ 56 Bermejo Ortega, Pedro, 122–23 Bernal, Diego, 115 Biting, 51–52, 60, 172, 182 Bívar, Cristoval de, 207 Bívar, Francisca de, 207 Bobadilla, Jerónimo Castillo de, 70–71, 92, 135–36, 139, 150 Bonds ( fianzas), 92–95 Bonnets, 171, 179, 190 Bravo Pinedos, Alonso, 134, 185 Brothers, nature of relationship, 101, 115– 17, 202 Burgos, Pedro de, 148–49 Burlas, burlando, 81, 88, 115, 135, 141–42, 146–48, 153, 174–75 Buytrago, Diego de, 222–23 Cabrón, cabrito, 40–41, 103, 119, 130 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 1–2, 6, 68, 188, 214, 223, 225, 227, 232; The Alcalde of Zalamea, 65–68, 101–102, 160; The Final Duel of Spain, 17–21, 25, 27–28,

30, 60, 155; The Painter of His Dishonor, 2, 19, 100–101, 108, 154, 160; The Physician of His Honor, 1–2, 4, 66–67, 102, 158–60, 163–64, 177, 195–96; Secret Insult, Secret Vengeance, 2, 102, 160 Calle, Antonio de la, 49 Calle de Ábila, Juan de la, 152 Calle Real, 10, 12, 83, 116, 183 Calvo, Alonso, 178–79 Calvo, Eugenio, 171 Camacha, María, 37–38, 45, 167 Camacho, Juan, 102–4, 110–12, 119–22, 129–31, 134, 139–43, 148, 151–54, 191, 228 Cámara de Castilla, 14, 96–97, 198 Capes, 46, 49, 51, 62, 120, 144, 146, 153, 170–71, 209 Carballal, Alonso de, 173–74 Carcax, Miguel, 127 *Carpio, Agustín, 55, 59, 116, 136–37 Carpio, Tomás, 172 Carpio Anaya, Juan, 117 Carpio Herrero, Juan, 116 Carranza, Jerónimo, 28 *Carrasco, Alonso, 40, 49, 128, 170 *Carrasco, Juan, 39–40, 117, 149 Carrasco, Jusepe, 170 Carrasco, Pedro, of Madrid, 213 Carrasco, Pedro, of Yébenes, 210–12 Carrillo de Navas, Juan, 154 Casa, Baltasar de la, 218–20 Casas, Beatriz de la, 185 Castaño, Juan, 60–62 Casteñeda, Juan de, 186 Castile: honor in culture, 2, 4, 6–8, 61– 64, 106, 150, 156, 178, 192–93, 224, 231–32; honor and law, 98–99; and family, 197, 199–202; adultery, 225 Castillo y Villarubia, Alonso del, 214–15 Castro, Francisco de, 220–21 Celso, Hugo de, 68, 70, 191, 197 Cemeteries, 12, 103, 111, 141–42, 147, 151 Cerda, Juan de la, 161, 197–98 Cerro, Dr., physician, 132–33 Cervantes, Miguel de, 226–27 Cervantes, Roque de, 142 Charles V: in literature, 18–19, 25, 30; as king of Spain, 26, 28; and proposed duel 31–32, 53, 63

index

Chaves, Antonio de, 127 Chaves, Jerónimo de, 169, 228 Chico, Pedro, 208–9 Christian moralists, 5, 104–9, 155–56, 160–64, 174–75, 188–92, 197, 230 Churches, churchyards, 12, 80, 103, 111, 120, 127, 130, 141, 148, 151, 157–58, 174, 176, 181, 192 *Cid, Bartolomé, 124–25, 187, 209–10 Cid, Catalina, 58, 183 *Cid, Francisco, 129–30, 212 Cid, Lic. Juan, 42–43, 45, 79 Çid, Luis, 119–20, 140 *Cid, Pedro, 142, 209–10, 212 Ciruelo, Pedro, 105, 107–8 Ciudad, Alberto, 219 Çivantes, Gerónima de, 216 Cobo, Pedro, 39, 128–29, 202–203 Cohen, Elizabeth, 63 Cohen, Thomas V., 63 Collazos, Jaçinto, 143 Comelin, Don Francisco, 195–96 Confessor’s manuals. See Christian moralists Constables, 13–14, 57, 74, 125, 191; and duels, 19–20, 32; and confrontations, 34, 122, 129, 135, 140, 145, 176, 202; defiance of, 47, 84, 94, 111, 115, 126, 142 172, 185; and arrests, 58–60, 94, 183; enforcing debts, 59, 126–27, 134, 139, 142; not recognized, 59–60, 130, 134– 35, 139; and fiel del juzgado, 75, 87, 213; misconduct of, 85–86, 134–39; outside Spain, 150; and adultery, 195, 220 Cordero, Juan Martín, 23, 27 Cordobés, Juan, 214 Cordovés, Alonso, 45 Cordovés, Pedro, 84 Corral, Francisco, 49, 119, 141, 144 Courtesy, 54, 62, 107–8, 135, 198 Covarrubias, Sebastián, 40–41, 54, 131 Credit, 9, 24, 111, 119–22, 127–28, 148– 49, 165, 167–70, 177, 185, 192, 201, 204, 229, 231 Crespa, María, 172, 178 Crespo, Juan, 83, 187, 203, 205 Criminal cases, 7–8; proceedings, 13–14, 33, 69–74, 77, 80, 84–85; chosen for this book, 14, 164; compared to dueling

299

manuals, 20–21, 32–34; as recourse in disputes, 54, 68–69, 74–77, 92–93, 97–98, 185–86, 216–17 Criminal law, 68–72, 77 *Cruz, Francisco de la, 40–41, 113, 136, 149, 170–71, 188–89 Cruz, Juan de la, 115, 177 Cruz, Vicente de la, 94 Cruz la Silba, María de la, 216–17 Cuadrado, Domingo, 212 Cuadrado, Sebastián, 212 Cuckold, 24, 197; nature of insult, 38, 40– 42, 44, 62, 71, 103, 112, 119, 155, 166, 181, 228–29 Cudgels, 44, 48, 52, 57, 90, 113, 133, 208, 226 Daniel, priest, 35, 136 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 98 Delgado, Francisco, scribe, 91 Descobar, Ysabel, 40 Despinar, Juan. See ‘‘Espinar, Juan de’’ Desqueber, Don Pedro, 217–18 Dessalas, Ysavel, 206 Desteras, Francisco, 216 Díaz, Alonso, 82, 204 Díaz, Ana, widow of Diego Blas, 157, 176, 178, 181, 192 Díaz, Ana, wife of Lorente Martín, 35 Díaz, Domingo, 115, 177 Díaz, Eugenio, 58, 116 Díaz, Francisco, 44 Díaz, Inés, 39 Díaz, Juana, 44 Díaz, Lope, 199, 215 Díaz, María, 35 Díaz, Nicolas, 58 Díaz, Pedro, 132 Domínguez, Miguel, 20, 46, 53, 57, 81 Dorado, Don Juan, 60–61 Dorado, Juan, 44 Drunkard, 38, 133, 142, 147, 180, 183, 211 Dueling manuals, 5–6, 8, 10, 67, 104, 155, 229; and the process of duels, 20, 23– 25, 29–30, 54 Duels: among the non-elite, 7; in literature, 17–18, 226–27; private duels, 18, 21, 26, 30, 70, 227–28; judicial duels, 18, 21, 30, 70; history of, 21–23, 26, 63;

300

index

Duels (continued) condemnation of, 26–29, 69, 71–72; nature of popular duels, 34–35, 63; compared to criminal cases, 43, 45, 49– 50, 53–54, 57, 144, 179, 183, 192; compared to criminal process, 69, 77, 97; women and duels, 184–85 Duque, Sebastián, 206 Durango, Juan, constable, 82 Durango, Juan, shoemaker, 42, 55–56 Ears, 45, 80 England, 63, 150, 192, 231 Escobar y Mendoza, Antonio de, 105 Espinar, Juan de, 40, 93, 170 Espinosa, Juan de, 160–63, 167 Esteban, Francisco, 40, 170 Esteban Ventura, Francisco, 60, 172 Estebanote, Juan, 181 Face, 19, 45–46, 49–50, 58, 74, 113, 118, 125, 136–37, 153–54, 157, 166, 169, 171– 72, 181, 183, 210, 221 False witness, 39, 54, 80, 107, 183, 186– 87 Family: protecting family members, 9, 104, 110, 167, 170–73; and reputation, 39–41, 112, 119; family disputes, 196– 97, 213–18, 223; and property, 201 Farr, James, 99 Felipe, Pedro, 210, 212 Fernández, Alonso, 203 Fernández, Ana, 37, 80, 183–84 Fernández, Antonio, 40, 165 Fernández, Catalina, daughter of Juan Sevillano, 187 Fernández, Catalina, wife of Mateo Fernández Terzero, 76 Fernández, Cristobal, 137 Fernández, Eugenio, 118 Fernández, Josefa, 173 Fernández, Lucas, 113 *Fernández, María, 56–57, 113, 157, 176, 178–79, 181, 192 Fernández, Ysabel, 165 Fernández Barbero, Martín, 53 Fernández Bujío, Pedro, 39, 128–29, 202–3 Fernández del Pozo, Lucía, 187 Fernández Terzero, Mateo, 76

Festivals, 12, 48, 57, 111, 141–43, 145–46, 172 Feuds, 170–72, 189, 192 Fiel del juzgado: description, 9–10, 13, 88; archive of, 13–14, 33, 74, 85, 110, 130, 164, 196; enforcing debts, 20, 125–26, 134–35, 138; opening investigations, 42, 75, 102–3, 209, 222; appeals to, 42–43; nature as judge, 73, 86–87, 92, 95–98; overseeing Yébenes, 78, 82, 84–88, 90–95, 112, 129, 136, 148, 187, 207, 211; and sentencing, 84, 86, 90, 93, 115, 136–37; and alcaldes and constables, 131, 137–38, 172, 213 Firearms, 51, 58, 78, 129, 152, 206 France, 31–32, 97–98, 150, 231 Francis I, of France, 31–32, 53, 63 Francisca, Juana, 174 Francisco, Juan, 127 Francisco, slave, 210 Franco, Gregorio, 132 Frias, Ana de, 176, 184 Galán, Alonso, 118 Galán, Andrés, 145 Games and gambling, 111, 115, 141, 148– 50, 152–53, 155, 174–75, 177, 215, 229 Garay, Juan de, 172 Garçes, Francisco, 216 *García, Ana, 171, 184–85, 208 García, Angela, 171 García, Antonio, of Madrid, 143 García, Antonio, of Palencia, 133 García, Bartolomé, 129 *García, Catalina, 42, 45 García, Cristobal, 91 García, Christobal, 113 García, Diego, 59–60 García, Eugenio, 184 García, Francisco, 138 García, Francisco, bricklayer, 181 García, Gabriel, 48 García, Gabriel, in minor orders, 84 García, Isabel, of Toral de los Guzmanes, 83, 187, 203 García, Lorenzo, 180 *García, Luis, 58–60 García, María, 46, 180

index

García, Marina, 183 García, Martín, 133 *García, Pedro, 46, 124–25, 222 García, Sebastián, 118 García, Ysavel, of Madrid, 220 García de Gaspar, Andrés, 128 García ‘‘el Gordillo,’’ Francisco, 153 García Guerrero, Alonso, 135–36 García Hinojosa, Francisco, 204 García Nobleja, Juan, 171–72 García de Pasqual, Juan, 125–26 García Prieto, Gaspar, 132–33 García Ruiz, Gabriel, 36 García Vélez, Pedro, 168 García Ximénez, Lucas, 36 Garoz, Pedro, 113, 179, 229 Garoz, Sebastián, 136–37 Gelez, Miguel, 220 Germany, 63, 232 Gestures, 8, 46–48, 62, 227 Gil, Alonso, 51–52, 55 Gilchey, Polonia, 218 Giménez, Cristoval, 218 Giménez, María, 117 Gómez, Ana, 168 Gómez, Catalina, 83, 113, 187 Gómez, Don Francisco, 222 Gómez, Francisco, 50 Gómez, Gabriel, 48, 56–57 Gómez, Gaspar, 61 *Gómez, Juan, 53, 146–47 Gómez, Lucas, 199, 218–19 Gómez, Lucía, 48 Gómez, Luis, 114 Gómez, Luisa, 218–20 Gómez, María, of Seville, 186 *Gómez, María, of Yébenes, 76, 79, 113– 14, 180, 186, 209–10 Gómez, Petronila, 209–10 Gómez, Quiteria, 182–83, 189 Gómez Chueco, Alonso, 138 Gómez de Montemayor, Francisco, 19, 38, 49, 57, 73–74 Gómez la Montera, María, 79, 176 Gonçales, Andrés, 116 González, Ana, 210 González, Francisco, 147 González, María, 180 Good Friday Pardons: description, 14–15,

301

96–97; chosen for this book, 15–16, 164, 198 Gordillo, Juan, 206 Gorgoxo, Fernando, 83, 187, 203 Gossip, 42, 61, 76, 79, 107, 123, 147, 179 Gowing, Laura, 98, 192 Grande, Juan, 217–18 Guerrera, Ysabel, 134, 185 Guerrero, Gabriel, father, 103, 110, 112, 132–33, 141, 143 Guerrero, Gabriel, son, 59, 146–47 Guerrero, Juan, 184 Guevara, Antonio de, 161–62, 175, 180, 198 Guindas Fernández, Juan, 59 Guzmán, Francisco, 148–49 Guzmana, La, 40 Gypsies, 15, 153, 184, 231 Hats, 20, 46, 49, 53, 55, 57, 132, 140, 144, 153–54, 175–76, 184, 205, 227 Hernández, Agustín, 127 Hernández, Bartolomé, 206 Hernández, Catalina, 39, 128–29, 202–3 Hernández, Eugenio, 202 Hernández, Joseph, 184 Hernández, Lucas, 79 Hernández, María, of Málaga, 206 Hernández, María, of Yébenes, 171–72 Hernández de Pedraza, Pedro, 118, 153 Herrup, Cynthia, 98–99 Hevia Bolaños, Juan de, 68, 70–72, 82 Hidalgo, Juan, 149 Hombre de bien, 37, 76, 124, 126, 134 Honor: term in literature, 1, 18–19, 27, 64, 100–101, 159, 194; as a code 2–8, 57, 62, 154, 158, 166, 172, 178, 188–89, 223, 227, 230; as a rhetoric, 7–9, 16, 21, 41, 44, 62, 64, 111–12, 118, 123–24, 132, 151, 155, 165, 168, 176, 196–97, 202, 205, 212–13, 215, 224, 227; and dueling manuals, 27–28; examples, 36–37, 39, 41, 45, 78, 88, 138, 166, 180–81, 183, 207, 229; nature of term, 38, 54, 119, 152, 179, 191, 230; honor versus law, 54–55, 98–99, 126, 230; and Christian virtue, 106–10, 155–56, 229–30; and emotions, 108, 228; and judicial o≈cials, 130–31, 136; nature of honor for

302

index

Honor (continued) men 151; purpose, 151–56, 191–92, 228–29; nature of honor for women, 177, 180–81, 188–89 Honor plays, 2–6, 9–10, 227, 230, 232; and duels, 19, 21, 54; and sexual reputation, 41, 102, 113, 155, 160, 164, 189; honor versus law, 55, 65–71, 73, 97; and Christian morality, 108; and adultery, 196, 214, 224–25 Hyams, Paul, 98 Ibáñez, Josepha, 76, 79, 171, 180, 186 Iceland, 98 In-laws, nature of relationship, 197, 200– 209, 214, 223–24 Inns, nature of, 11, 111 Insults, nature of, 22, 43, 62–63, 151, 181, 227 Italy, 21–23, 26, 29, 31, 63, 192, 197, 201, 225, 231 Jews, 3–4, 232; nature of ‘‘Jew’’ as insult, 38, 42–44, 55, 62, 112, 117–18, 152–53, 171 Jiménez, Olalla, 102, 112, 151 Joly, Barthélemy, 62 Judges: in law books, 67–68, 70–72, 77; as mediators, 69, 72–73, 77, 95, 98; as arbitrary, 86 Jurists and jurisprudence, 5, 90, 95, 97– 98, 230; and duels, 21–22, 67–72 Jusepa, servant, 195, 220 Kings: in literature, 65–68, 73, 88, 97– 98; of Spain, 97, 140 Kuehn, Thomas, 196–97 Laque, Juan de, 176 Latin America, 63, 150, 225, 231 Lea, Polonia de, 215 Licentiate, definition, 11 Limpieza de sangre (purity of blood), 3–4, 39, 55, 118, 181, 232 Lineage, 39, 54, 119 Literary criticism, 3, 6–7, 16, 67, 158, 227 Lobon, Juan, ‘‘Roberto el Diablo,’’ 153 Loçano, Pedro, 42, 55–56 Lope de Vega, 2, 6, 68, 214, 223, 225, 227, 232; The Best Alcalde, the King, 101, 160; Fuenteovejuna, 66–67, 101, 160; Peri-

báñez and the Commander of Ocaña, 66–67, 101, 160; Punishment without Vengeance, 2, 19, 102, 160, 194–95, 223–24 López, Ana, of Toledo, 115, 177 López, Ana, of Yébenes, 214 López, Catalina, wife of Alonso Carrasco, 128 López, Catalina, wife of Juan Martín Beato, 118 López, Inés, 44 López, Isabel, 168, 189 *López, Juan, 139, 166 López, Marcos, 48, 175 *López, María, 41, 46–47, 55, 89, 113, 180, 182, 228 López, Martín, 44 López, Pedro, of Olula de Castro, 129 López, Pedro, of Yébenes, 59, 202 López de Azeña, Francisco, 49, 144 López Beata, Ana, 41–42 López la Cuerba, María, 76, 79, 186 López Delgado, Francisco, 59, 117 *López Delgado, Pedro, 59, 171, 183, 189 López de Orgaz, Pedro, 42–43, 128 *López Portillo, Andrés, 115, 123–24 López Portillo, Francisco, 78 Lópes Portillo, Juan, 74, 152 *López de Ruedas, Diego, 36, 39, 138–39, 142 *López de Ruedas, Francisco, 36, 137 López de San Marcos, Francisco, 139 López de San Marcos, Sebastián, 83, 113, 187 López Sevilla, Juan, 208–9 López Terzera, Ana, 184 López Tovar, Gregorio, 69 López de Vega, Antonio, 106, 140, 180 Lora, Pedro de la, 149–50 Losa, Pedro de, 186, 210 Lozano, Diego, 176, 184 Lozano, Juan Antonio, 27, 81 Lucas, Juan de, 142 Luciana, servant, 218 Luis, servant, 57–58 Luis de Granada: Book of Prayer, 105–6, 109–10, 156; Guide for Sinners, 105, 109–10 Luis de León, 160, 162–63, 165, 167–68

index

Lying, 22, 183; nature of giving the lie, 24, 30, 34–35, 107; and criminal proceedings, 77, 89; and debts, 121; women giving the lie 178–79, 183–84, 189 Macho, Juan, 74 Maestra, Catalina, 168, 189 Manuela, prostitute, 114 Manzano, Francisco, 147–48 Maragon, María de, 166, 179, 223 Maravedís, definition, 43 Marín, Catalina, 181–82 Marín, Francisco, 138 Marín de Sandobal, Francisco, 76, 85–86 Marquera, Dominga, 173 Márquez, Luis, 143 Martín, Alonso, 127 Martín, Diego, 57–58 Martín, Francisco, 203 Martín, Juan, of Segovia, 133–34 *Martín, Juan, of Yébenes, 49, 53, 137, 144, 202 Martín, Lorente, 35–36 *Martín, Pedro, 41, 47, 55, 89, 208–9, 228 *Martín, Tomás, 125–26, 168 Martín Cid, Juan, 74 Martín Despinar, Marcos, 93 Martín Guerrero, Juan, 42–43, 48–49, 56–57, 138 Martín Luengo, Pedro, 47 Martín de las Mendio, Diego, 47 Martín de Mora, Juan, 119 Martín de Sandobal, Juan, 58 Martínez, Francisca, 213 Martínez, Gaspar, 213 Martínez, Sebastiana, 213 Martínez de Márquez, Diego, 176–77 Mateo, Ana, 114 Medina, Juan de, 113–14 Medrano, María de, 173 Men: and traditional honor code, 1–5, 100–102; and women’s sexuality in criminal records, 103; protecting the family, 104, 110–19, 150–52, 155, 185, 229; and credit and debt, 104, 111, 119– 29, 151, 155, 229; defending oficio, 104, 111, 129–40, 150–51, 155, 229; and competition, 104, 111, 140–51, 175, 177, 229; as Christian gentlemen, 106–9, 229;

303

and masculinity, 111, 151, 153; in Spain and elsewhere, 150–51; and adultery, 223 Mendoza, Margarita, 174 Mexia, Gerónymo, 49, 144 Mexia, Vicente, 175, 190 Mexico, 193 Miguel, Francisco, 116 Miguel, Juan, 58, 116 Miguel, Marcos, 133 Miguel de Sandobal, Alonso, 209 Miller, William Ian, 98 Miranda, Cristobal de, 215 Mirando, Fernando del, 222 Mondragón, María de, 186–87 Monge, Alonso, 44 Montero, Alonso, 179 Monterroso y Alvarado, Gabriel de, 70 Montes de Toledo, 9–12, 85, 91 Montezuma, Count of, 140 Moor, nature of insult, 38, 44, 55, 117–18, 153 Morales, Bartolomé de, 50–51 Moran, Juan, 149 Moreno, Francisco, 102–3, 110, 112, 130, 140, 151 Moreno, Juan, 180 Moriscos, 13, 38–39, 78, 117–18, 186 Moustaches, 46, 49, 153, 227 Múnoz de Guzmán, Lic. Domingo, 47 Múnoz de Guzmán, Lic. Eugenio, 80, 204–5 Musante, Doña Clara, 195–96 Muslims, 3, 202, 232 Muzio, Girolamo, 22–23, 27, 29 Navamete, Augustina, daughter, 220 Navamete, Augustina, mother, 220 Netherlands, 31, 99, 232 Nieto, Andrés, 126 Nieto, Antón, 60, 94–95 Nieto, Diego, 116 Nieto, Francisco, 126 Nieto, Juan, 34–35, 37–38, 45, 47–48, 185 Nieto, Mateo, 45, 47 Nighttime, 102, 141, 145–46, 154 Nobles, 15, 68, 88, 96, 119, 139, 224; and duels, 20–23, 26, 34, 64, 131, 232; and Christian virtue, 107, 110; examples, 140; noblewomen, 174, 192

304

index

Non-elites, 8–9, 229, 232; and dueling, 20–21, 23, 32, 63; and law, 98–99; women, 164–65 Nueva recopilación, 69–71, 146, 197 Núñez de Castro, Alsonso, 107–8, 144 Obiedo, María de, 127, 169 Ochoa, Christoval, 150 Oficio, trade, or o≈ce, 9, 42, 104, 111, 129–40, 150, 173–74, 229 Old Christians, 3–4, 40, 78, 111, 117 Olibera, Juan de, 219 Olivares, the Count-Duke, 5, 28–30 Orna, Gerónimo de, 216 Ortega, Andrés de, 45 Ortega, Juan de, 35 Ortega, Pedro, 136–37 Ortiz, Juan, 46 Ortiz Lucio, Francisco, 105 Osuna, Francisco de, 105, 219 Oyo, Diego del, 216 Oyo, María del, 216 Palacio y Otura, Diego de, 215 *Palacios, Diego de, 74, 103, 130–31, 141, 151 Palacios, Francisca de, 169 Palacios, Juana de, 82–83, 166, 179, 223 Palacios, María de, 82, 204 Palomé, Benito, 133 Pañinas, Esteban, 78 Pardo, María, 184 Pareja, Doña Catalina, 199, 218 Paris de Puteo, 22–25, 29–30, 34, 53 Parraga, Maestro Juan, 48, 184 Paz, Antón de la, 48, 51, 149, 175, 211 Paz, María de la, of Baena, 219 Paz, María de la, of Yébenes, 204 Peace-making, nature of, 57–59, 61, 63 Pedraza, Juan de, 197 Pejo, Alonso del, 79 Peña, Juan de la, 169, 186 Peña, Pedro, 58 Peña, Phelipa de la, 172 Peñafort, Raymond de, 105 Peñalber, Andrés de, 125 Pérez, Andrés, 58, 116 Pérez, Domingo, 143 Pérez, Jacinto, 134, 185 Pérez, Mateo, 39, 54

Pérez Oliva, Eugenio, 19, 34–35, 38, 46, 49, 53, 57, 73–74, 81, 136 Pérez Oliva, Juan, 36, 39, 113 Pérez Oliva, Lic. Diego, 78, 83 Pérez Oliva, Mateo, 56 Pérez de Rojas, Andrés, 114 Pérez de Villaviciosa, Lic. Benito, 137 Peristiany, J. G., 4 Perry, Mary Elizabeth, 158 Philip II, king of Spain, 69, 146 Philip IV, king of Spain, 28, 103 Pitt-Rivers, Julian, 4, 68, 158, 178 Plaza, Don Juan de, 60–61 Plazas, nature of, 12, 111, 141–42, 151, 158, 174, 176 Pledges of reconciliation ( fee de amistades), 73, 81, 87, 90, 93, 95, 137, 146 Pohl, Susanne, 63 Ponce, Cristobal, 148 Porea, Tomás de, 114 Porres, Francisca de, 220 Povedano, Diego Alonso, 153–54 Pradilla Barnuevo, Francisco de, 70–71, 90–91, 135, 197 Prado, Juan de, 186 Prado, María del, 48, 51, 175 Price, 42, 55–55, 133–34, 168–69, 204 *Prieta, María, 51–52, 55, 118, 182 Private pardons (apartamientos), 73; nature of, 81–83, 87, 90, 92, 95–96, 187–88, 198–99 Puente, Antón de la, 207 Puente, Juan de la, 59, 134–35 Puente, Luis de la, 105, 107, 147, 198 Quartos, definition, 127 Quiñones, Fabián de, 124–25 Quiñones, Juan de, 37, 43–44 Quiroga, Estevan de, 212 Quiroga, Joseph de, 212 Ramírez, Alonso, 183 Ramírez, Gaspar, 94 Ramírez de la Trapera, Don Josephe, 221– 22 Ramón, Gaspar, 59–60, 126, 134–35 Rape, 15, 55, 93, 188, 210–12; in literature, 65, 67, 102, 160 Reales, definition, 34 Reconciliation, 29, 34, 54, 58, 62

index

Reputation, 8, 18, 227–28; and sex, 9, 41, 160–67, 177, 195, 224; and dueling, 19–20, 24, 30; and confrontations, 34– 37, 44, 62; and community, 43, 79–80; and law, 69, 76–78, 89, 97; and men, 103–4, 110–11, 152–55, 158, 191; and family, 112, 119, 173, 210, 214; and credit, 121–23; and oficio, 131–34, 140; and women, 158, 160, 162–63, 165, 173–75, 177–79, 185–86, 188–90, 192, 195 Reyes, Gaspar de los, 129 *Ribero, Blas, 58, 128 Rico, Pedro, 61 Río, Pedro del, 219 Rodrígues, Diego, 115–16 Rodrígues, Juan, 115–16 Rodrígues, María, 208 Rodríguez, Ana, 180 Rodríguez, Antonio, 46 Rodríguez, Francisco, 172 Rodríguez, Gaspar, 37–38, 45, 47–48, 167 Rodríguez, Josefe, 55 Rodríguez, Juana, 210–12 Rodríguez, Lic. Melchor, 137 Rodríguez, María, of Carmona, 115 Rodríguez, María, of Yébenes, 58, 183 Rodríguez, Miguel, 125 Rodríguez, Pascal, 40, 82–83 Rodríguez de Figueroa, Diego, 59, 103, 111, 119–22, 132, 140, 151, 191, 228 Rodríguez Lusitano, Manuel, 105, 121, 126, 135, 143 Rodríguez de Sigueroa, Alonso, 142 Rojas, Don Francisco de, 49 Rubio, Alonso, 47 Rubio, Andrés, 213 *Rubio, Juan, 128–29, 142, 145 Rubio, Sebastián, 124, 214 Rubio Herrero, Juan, 46, 146 Rubio Pastos, Juan, 172 Rubio Ramos, Juan, 168 Ruedas, Lic. Pedro de, 180, 182 Ru√, Julian, 63 Ruggiero, Guido, 201 Ruiz, Alonso, 59 Ruiz, Ana, 214 Ruiz, Blas, 51, 149 Ruiz, Catalina, 88, 185

305

Ruiz, Estevan, 134, 185 Ruiz, Francisco, 53, 202 Ruiz, Gabriel, 39, 207 Ruiz, Gaspar, 123–24 Ruiz, Juan, 207 Ruiz, María, 40, 170 Ruiz, Tomás, 56 Ruiz, Ysabel, 207 Ruiz Calero, Andrés, 36–37, 229 Ruiz Calero, Pedro, 149 Ruiz Loçano, Francisco, 180 Ruiz Paninas, Estevan, 203 Ruiz Pañinas, Francisco, 40, 82–83 Salaçar, Ana de, 208 Salaçar, Juana de, 181 Salgado Correa, Alexo, 70–71, 77, 88, 95 Salinas, Francisco, 178–79 San Bernardo, Beatris de, 219 Sánchez, Ana, 188–89 Sánchez, Antón, 210 *Sánchez, Catalina, 40, 93, 170, 206–207 Sánchez, Catalina, daughter of Catalina Sánchez, 206–7 Sánchez, Francisco, place unknown, 44 Sánchez, Francisco, of Yébenes, 82, 204–5 Sánchez, García, 36 Sánchez, Juan, of Trujillo, 210 Sánchez, Juan, of Yébenes, 79 Sánchez, Luisa, 135 Sánchez, Mateo, of Málaga, 205–6 Sánchez, Mateo, of Yébenes, 81 Sánchez, Miguel, 114 Sánchez, Pedro, 210 Sánchez, Quiteria, 170 Sánchez, Tomás, 211 Sánchez, Ynés, 216–17 Sánchez de Bermejo, Juan, 80 Sandobal, Catalina, 209 Sandoval, Don Antonio de, 133 Santa Ana, Juan de, 115 Schneider, Jane, 4 Scribes: and criminal investigations, 33– 34, 70, 73, 97; and status, 139 *Serrano, Bartolomé, 132–33, 147 *Serrano, Juan, 50, 59, 78, 117, 204 Serrano, Juseppe, 147 Serrano, Mateo, 215, 220 Sevilla, Sebastián de, 177

306

index

Sevilla de Bernaldo, Juan de, 88, 185 Sevillano, Marcos, 181–82 Sex: in traditional honor code, 1–6, 101–2, 155, 232; female sexual purity, 9, 40, 54, 102, 160–65, 177, 179, 189, 192, 195; and gestures, 47–48; and men, 151; importance for rhetoric of honor, 165– 67, 176, 179, 189, 228 Shame, vergüenza, 4–6, 155–56, 158, 162– 65, 180, 189–92, 228 Shameless, nature of insult, 40, 163, 166 Sharpe, J. A., 98 Sibra, La, prostitute, 114 Siete partidas, 68–69, 77, 96 Sigura, María de, 114 Slaves, 15, 40, 137, 149, 190, 198, 209–10, 231 Smail, Daniel, 98 Sodomite, 56, 62, 71, 103, 126, 166 Soldiers: in dueling manuals, 22–23, 26, 28, 30; and pardons, 97; and status, 139 Solís, Doña Catalina de, 222 Soliz, Fernández de, 129 Soplón, 38, 138, 142 Soria, Martín de, 94 Soto, Juan de, 105–6, 117, 136, 175 Spain: honor in culture, 3–4, 6–8, 158, 232; as part of the Mediterranean, 5–6, 192, 227; as part of Europe, 7–8, 192, 227, 232 Spierenburg, Pieter, 63 Streets as arenas of honor, 112–13, 141, 144–45, 151, 158, 176–77, 191 Suárez, María, 102, 112, 151 Suiro, Amaro, 172–73 Surgeons, 52–53, 58, 84, 147 Switzerland, 232 Swords: in literature, 1, 18; and dueling manuals, 27, 29; and gestures, 48, 57, 62; and women, 51–52, 181–82; and symbolism, 153–54 Taverns, 11, 79, 103, 111, 116, 127, 142–43, 150–51, 154, 173–75, 184, 191 Thief, nature of insult, 39, 41, 44, 128, 153, 188, 207 Toledo: jurisdiction over Yébenes, 9, 12– 13, 85, 87–88, 91, 97–98, 116, 138; jail, 14, 39, 42, 59, 72, 79, 89–90, 93, 138, 182, 187

Toledo, Manuel de, 147–48 Torre, Juan de la, 150 Torre, Marcos de la, 56–57 Torre, Martín de la, 218 Torre, Pedro de la, 76 Torre Belluga, Marcos de la, 39 Torrellas, Pedro de, 17–21, 25, 30, 70 Torres, Catalina de, 171, 183, 189 Torres, Mariana de, 171, 183, 189 Torres, Tomás de, 146 Torture, 67, 220 Trebiño, Pedro, 113, 208 Trials, nature of, 14, 94–97, 211 Truth: and duels, 18, 20, 24, 30; and criminal courts, 33–34, 77; and confrontations, 34–35, 155 Ureña, María de, 76, 171, 180, 186 Urosa, Ana de, 179 Urrea, Jerónimo de, 26–31, 81, 106–7 Valera, Domingo de, 105 Valera, Mosén Diego de, 23, 30, 34 Vallegas, Juan de, 179 Vara de justicia, 47, 54, 126, 130–31, 134– 35, 137–39, 172, 178 Vega, Mateo, 214–15 Vélez, Andrés, 113–14 Vélez Franco, Gregorio, 34–35, 37 Vengeance: in traditional honor code, 3, 101, 195; in judicial duels, 18; in private duels, 22, 27; and law, 68–69, 81, 97, 197; and Christian virtue, 106–8, 197 Vergara, Don Juan de, 220 Villa, Alonso del, 51–52, 55 Villa, Juan de, 150 Villadiego Vascuñada y Montoya, Alfonso de, 70, 72, 77–78, 82, 91–92, 221 *Villareal, Juan de, 46, 146, 206–7 Villareal, Pedro de, 206–7 Villareal, Sebastián de, 206–7 Villasante, Diego Castillo de, 23–24, 30, 32 Vives, Juan Luis, 160, 162, 175, 198 Walker, Garthine, 192 Whipping, 48, 209–10 Whore, nature of insult, 38, 40–41, 43, 71, 118, 152, 155, 166–67, 188, 228 Wife-murder plays, 2–3, 6, 102, 196, 225

index

Wives: protected by husbands, 55, 103, 112–13; ‘‘rescuing’’ husbands, 60, 172; mistreatment by husbands, 76, 196, 205–8; and jealousy, 198 Women: and traditional honor code, 1–5, 101–2, 158; and sex, 48, 150, 155, 161– 67, 174–75, 201, 229; employing violence, 51, 157–58, 164, 166, 168, 180– 81, 185, 188, 193; agency within criminal cases, 75–76, 79, 83, 97–99, 165, 185–87, 193, 229; and Christian moralists, 105, 160–61, 174, 230; using rhetoric of honor, 157–58, 164–65, 178–88; and enclosure, 158, 161–63, 174–75, 177, 190, 192, 198, 229; and housewifery, 162–63, 165, 173, 192; and credit and debt, 165, 167–70, 177, 185, 192, 201, 229–30; protecting the family, 165, 167, 170–73, 177, 192, 229–30; defending own reputations, 165, 178, 185, 192–

307

93; and identity, 189–90; and marriage, 197, 201–2, 208–12; and reconciliation, 213; and adultery, 214–23 *Ximénez, Bartolomé, 35, 55–56, 116, 137 Ximénez, Francisca, 218–20 Ximénez, Francisco, 53 Ximénez, Juan, of Cartagena, 195 Ximénez, Juan, of Yébenes, 55, 116, 137 Ximénez, Martín, 76, 171, 184, 186 Ximénez Majano, Bartolomé, 122–23 Ximénez Majero, Bartolomé, 54 Yébenes: description, 9–12; ‘‘Toledo’’ and ‘‘Orden’’ or ‘‘San Juan’’ neighborhoods, 10, 12, 58–59, 74, 83, 130, 135, 137; population, 10 Ysidro, Juan, 114 Zerbantes, Roque de, 213