[210] The first attack on Mariana was made by a Spaniard in Italy, who called himself Pedro Mantuano, and who printed his “Advertencias” at Milan in 1611. Thomas Tamayo de Vargas wrote a vituperative reply to it (Toledo, 1616, 4to). But Mariana wisely refused to read either. The Marquis of Mondejar, a most respectable authority, renewed the discussion, and his “Advertencias” were published, (Valencia, 1746, folio,) with a preface by Mayans y Siscar, somewhat mitigating their force. Still, neither these, which are the principal criticisms that have appeared on Mariana, nor any others, have, in the estimation of Spaniards, seriously interfered with his claims to be regarded as the great historian of his country.
[211] Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 255. La Mothe le Vayer, in a discourse addressed to Cardinal Mazarin, (Œuvres, Paris, 1662, folio, Tom. I. pp. 225, etc.,) assails Sandoval furiously, and sometimes successfully, for his credulity, superstition, flattery, etc., not forgetting his style. It was a part of the warfare of France against Spain.
[212] During this period, embracing a large part of the seventeenth century, two remarkable controversies took place in Spain, which, by introducing a more critical caution into historical composition, were not without their effect on Mariana, and may have tended to diminish the number of his successors, by subjecting history, in all its forms, to more rigorous rules. The discussions referred to arose in consequence of two extraordinary forgeries, which, for a time, created a great sensation throughout the country, and deluded not a few intelligent men and honest scholars.
The first related to certain metallic plates, sometimes called “The Leaden Books,” which, having been prepared and buried for the purpose several years before, were disinterred near Granada between 1588 and 1595, and, when deciphered, seemed to offer materials for defending the favorite doctrine of the Spanish Church on the Immaculate Conception, and for establishing the great corner-stone of Spanish ecclesiastical history, the coming to Spain of the Apostle James, the patron saint of the country. This gross forgery was received for authentic history by Philip II., Philip III., and Philip IV., each of whom, in a council of state, consisting of the principal personages of the kingdom, solemnly adjudged it to be true; so that, at one period of the discussion, some persons believed the “Leaden Books” would be admitted into the Canon of the Scriptures. The question, however, was in time settled at Rome, and they were decided, by the highest tribunal of the Church, to be false and forged; a decision in which Spain soon acquiesced.
The other fraud was connected with this one of the “Leaden Books,” whose authority it was alleged to confirm; but it was much broader and bolder in its claims and character. It consisted of a series of fragments of chronicles, circulated earlier in manuscript, but first printed in 1610, and then represented to have come, in 1594, from the monastery of Fulda, near Worms, to Father Higuera, of Toledo, a Jesuit, and a personal acquaintance of Mariana. They purported, on their face, to have been written by Flavius Lucius Dexter, Marcus Maximus, Heleca, and other primitive Christians, and contained important and wholly new statements touching the early civil and ecclesiastical history of Spain. They were, no doubt, an imitation of the forgeries of John of Viterbo, given to the world about a century before as the works of Berosus and Manetho; but the Spanish forgeries were prepared with more learning and a nicer ingenuity. Flattering fictions were fitted to recognized facts, as if both rested on the same authority; new saints were given to churches that were not well provided in this department of their hagiology; a dignified origin was traced for noble families, that had before been unable to boast of their founders; and a multitude of Christian conquests and achievements were hinted at or recorded, that gratified the pride of the whole nation, the more because they had never till then been heard of. Few doubted what it was so agreeable to all to believe. Sandoval, Tamayo de Vargas, Lorenzo Ramirez de Prado, and, for a time, Nicolas Antonio,—all learned men,—were persuaded that these summaries of chronicles, or chronicones, as they were called, were authentic; and if Arias Montano, the editor of the Polyglot, Mariana, the historian, and Antonio Agustin, the cautious and critical friend of Zurita, held an opposite faith, they did not think it worth while openly to avow it. The current of opinion, in fact, ran strongly in favor of the forgeries; and they were generally regarded as true history till about 1650 or a little later, and therefore till long after the death of their real author, Father Higuera, which happened in 1624. The discussion about them, however, which, it is evident, was going quietly on during much of this time, was useful. Doubts were multiplied; the disbelief in their genuineness, which had been expressed to Higuera himself, as early as 1595, by the modest and learned Juan Bautista Perez, Bishop of Segorbe, gradually gained ground; writers of history grew cautious; and at last, in 1652, Nicolas Antonio began his “Historias Fabulosas”; a huge folio, which he left unfinished at his death, and which was not printed till long afterwards, but which, with its cumbrous, though clear-sighted learning, left no doubt as to the nature and extent of the fraud of Father Higuera, and made his case a teaching to all future Spanish historians, that does not seem to have been lost on them. See the Chronicle of Dexter at the end of Antonio’s Bibliotheca Vetus; the Historias Fabulosas of Antonio, with the Life of its author prefixed by Mayans y Siscar, (Madrid, 1742, folio,) to show the grossness of the whole imposture; and the “Chrónica Universal” of Alonso Maldonado, (Madrid, 1624, folio,) to show how implicitly it was then believed and followed by learned men. The man of learning who was the most clear-sighted about “The Leaden Books” and the chronicones, and who behaved with the most courage in relation to them from the first, was, I suppose, the Bishop of Segorbe, who is noticed in Villanueva, “Viage Literario á las Iglesias de España,” (Madrid, 1804, 8vo, Tom. III. p. 166,) together with the document (pp. 259-278) in which he exposes the whole fraud, but which was never before published.
[213] “Historia General de los Hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Océano,” Madrid, 1601-15, 4 vols. fol.—“Historia General del Mundo del Tiempo del Señor Rey Don Felipe II., desde 1559, hasta su Muerte,” Madrid, 1601-12, 3 vols. fol.—Five books on the History of Portugal and the Conquest of the Azores were printed, Madrid, 1591, 4to; the History of the League, Madrid, 1598, 4to; and the History of the Troubles in Aragon, in 1612, 4to; the last being only a tract of 140 pages. A work on the History of Italy, from 1281 to 1559, printed at Madrid in 1624, folio, I have never seen. The of Historia General del Mundo is on the Index of 1667, for expurgation.
[214] “Conquista de las Islas Molucas,” Madrid, 1609, folio. Pellicer, Bib. de Trad., Tom. I. p. 87. The love-story of Durante, an ensign, in the third book of the “Conquista,” is good and probable; and the account of the Patagonian giants, in the same book, turns out to be almost true, like some of the long-discredited stories of Marco Polo and Mendez Pinto.
[215] “La Traduccion del Indio de los Tres Diálogos de Amor, de Leon Hebreo, echado de Italiano en Espagnol, por Garcilasso Inga de la Vega,” Madrid, 1590, 4to. A Spanish translation of it, which I have seen, had appeared at Venice in 1568, and I believe there was another at Zaragoza in 1584, of which it seems strange that Garcilasso knew nothing. (Barbosa, Bib. Lus., Tom. II. p. 920; Castro, Bib., Tom. I. p. 371; and Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 232.) The letter of Garcilasso to Philip II., with additional remarks by its author, containing interesting materials for his own life, is prefixed to the first edition of the second part of the Commentaries on Peru. “La Florida” was printed at Lisbon in 1606, 4to; the first part of the Peru at Lisbon, 1609, folio; and the second part at Córdova, 1617, folio. Both of the historical works are to be found in several other editions, and both have been translated into most of the languages of modern Europe.
Two striking examples may be given of the opposite kinds of that credulity in Garcilasso which so much impairs the value of his Commentaries. He believed that the subjection of Peru by the Spaniards was predicted by the last of the Incas that reigned before their arrival, (Parte I. Lib. IX. c. 15, and Parte II. Lib. VIII. c. 18,) and he believed that all the Spaniards in the army of Peru, who were notorious blasphemers, perished by wounds in the mouth (Parte II., Lib. IV. c. 21).
[216] “Expedicion de los Catalanes contra Griegos y Turcos, por Francisco de Moncada, Conde de Osona,” Barcelona, 1623, and Madrid, 1772 and 1805, 12mo. There is an edition, also, of Barcelona, 1842, 8vo, edited by Don Jaime Tió, with a poem at the end by Calisto Fernandez Campo-redondo, which is on the same subject with the History, and in 1841 gained a prize at Barcelona for its success at a festival, that reminds us of the days of the Floral Games and of the Marquis of Villena.