Abstract
Alonso de Espina, a Franciscan friar well known as a learned man, master in theology, and preacher in the kingdom of Castile under Juan II and Enrique IV, was the author of the bestseller Fortalitium fidei contra iudaeos, sarracenos et alios christianae fidei inimicos (1459–1461). The Fortalitium consists of five books, written to warn Christians against the various enemies of their faith: heretics, Jews, Muslims, witches and demons. This paper studies the diffusion and impact of the work from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries as it spread throughout European libraries and private collections. Espina’s identification and description of a diverse groups of “Others” with respect to the Christian faith later helped inquisitors to develop appropriate questions to be asked during interrogations, not only in the Iberian Peninsula but also in Flanders and Italy, and ultimately as far afield as the Philippines. However, in some of these geographical contexts the Fortalitium’s books about Jews and Muslims, which could be most useful for trials of alleged blasphemers and false converts associated with those communities, actually faded in comparison with the interest raised by its books on heretics, demons, and witches at the time of the Reformation movements. Though originally produced in manuscript for Spanish clergy, different readerships account for the publication of several incunabula and early sixteenth-century editions of this work in multiple languages, always printed outside the Iberian Peninsula, but often with the aim of being circulated there, too. Finally, the notoriously anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim sections of this text must be read with the understanding that they were not always as influential as has often been thought, especially in those regions where the Fortalitium enjoyed its widest circulation. Rather, the Fortalitium became a long-lived international bestseller due to its usefulness for a broad range of inquisitors confronting the perceived enemies of Christianity in all their varied forms, just as Espina had intended.
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Notes
- 1.
This use was studied by Steven J. McMichael, Was Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah?: Alphonso de Espina’s argument against the Jews in the Fortalitium fidei (c.1464) (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994) and idem, “The End of the World, Antichrist and the final conversion of the Jews in the Fortalitium Fidei of friar Alonso de Espina (d. 1464),” Medieval Encounters 12, no. 2 (2006): 224–73.
- 2.
On his biography, see Alisa Meyuhas Ginio, La forteresse de la foi: la vision du monde d’Alonso d’Espina, moine espagnol (Paris: Cerf, 1998), 67–102; Ana Echevarria, The Fortress of Faith. The attitude towards Muslims in fifteenth century Spain (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 47–55, and idem, “Alfonso de la Espina,” in Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History, vol. 5, 1350–1500, ed. David Thomas and Alex Mallett (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 451–55; Rosa Vidal Doval, ‘Misera Hispania’: Jews and Conversos in Alonso de Espina’s Fortalitium fidei (Oxford: The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, 2013), 20–29. Also Constanza Cavallero, “Alonso de Espina y sus homónimos. Confusiones historiográficas e interrogantes históricos,” Revista de Historia Jerónimo Zurita 93 (2018): 121–38, who disentangles the confusion involving three authors with the same name.
- 3.
Echevarria, Fortress, 98. At least two more manuscripts of the Fortalitium have disappeared: Royal Library of the Monastery of San Lorenzo in El Escorial (BRMSL) ms. I.E.18, and the one ordered by Bishop John of Magdeburg and finished around 1471, which is no longer found in the Magdeburg Manuscript Collection of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.
- 4.
Cavallero has already called for attention on this, asking for an analysis of the whole Fortalitium rather than the fragmentary focus on just one or two books, a desire that this article seeks to fulfill. Constanza Cavallero, Los enemigos del fin del mundo. Judíos, herejes y demonios en el Fortalitium fidei de Alonso de Espina (Castilla, siglo XV) (Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila, 2016), 154–55.
- 5.
All the editions are mentioned in Antonio Palau y Dulcet, Manual del librero hispano-americano (Barcelona: Librería Palau, 1951), vol. 5, under the heading “Espina.” Another list in Klaus Reinhardt and Horacio Santiago-Otero, Biblioteca bíblica ibérica medieval (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1986), 63–64.
- 6.
Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, MS Latin II.83, cat. 1713, Joseph van den Gheyn, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique (Brussels: H. Lambertin, 1903), 3:103–5.
- 7.
Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, MS Latin 7497 (around 1470), cat. 1711.
- 8.
Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, MS Latin 9524 (1470–1480), cat. 1712. Another contemporary copy without location is Latin MS 156–157 (1470–1480).
- 9.
Euan Cameron, The Reformation of the Heretics: The Waldenses of the Alps 1480–1580 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
- 10.
Karl Schorbach, Der Straßburger Frühdrucker Johann Mentelin (1458–1478): Studien zu seinem Leben und Werke (Mainz: Verlag der Gutenberg-Gesellschaft, 1932).
- 11.
Thomas Kren and Scott McKendrick (eds.), Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe (Los Angeles: J. P. Getty Museum, 2003), 68, 224.
- 12.
Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels, MS 9007 (cat. 1714). The book was bought by Margaret of Austria for her personal library, and then inherited by Mary of Hungary when she became ruler of the Low Countries.
- 13.
As witnessed by the copies nowadays at the British Library, Royal 17 F VI-VII and Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MSS Fr. 20067–20069. Three more copies are also extant in the Belgian Royal Library. Another copy is in the Bürger Bibliothek of Bern (only books IV and V), along with the Bibliothèque of Douai and two in the National Library of Vienna, according to Reinhardt and Santiago-Otero, Biblioteca bíblica, 64. For the Vienna manuscripts, see Paulino Rodríguez Barral, La imagen del judío en la España medieval: el conflicto entre cristianismo y judaísmo en las artes visuales góticas (Barcelona: Universidad Autónoma, 2009).
- 14.
Reinhardt and Santiago-Otero, Biblioteca bíblica, 64.
- 15.
The Directorium was also less successful in print before its 1575 revision, with only one complete and one partial edition appearing at the turn of the sixteenth century. I thank Robin Vose for this information.
- 16.
Julián Martín Abad, Los primeros tiempos de la imprenta en España (c. 1471–1520) (Madrid: Laberinto, 2003), 46–49.
- 17.
Martín Abad, Los primeros tiempos, 53.
- 18.
It is clear that these editions, however, reached Castilian monasteries such as the Premonstratensian house in La Vid (Burgos), which had a copy of the Nuremberg edition. Juan José Vallejo Penedo, “Catálogo de los incunables de la biblioteca del monasterio de La Vid,” Religión y cultura 34, no. 167 (1988): 609–29; Echevarria, Fortress, 99. Nowadays, a very useful tool to analyze their distribution is the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, British Library, https://data.cerl.org/istc/, that offers exhaustive information about the holdings of each version of the Fortalitium printed in the fifteenth century. Unfortunately, sixteenth-century printed books after 1520 are not included in it.
- 19.
For the network of Lyonese printers, see Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, La aparición del libro (México: FCE, 2005), 128–35.
- 20.
María del Carmen Álvarez Márquez, Bibliotecas privadas de Sevilla en los inicios de la Edad Moderna (Madrid: Pórtico, 2014), 106, 110–13, 154, 194, 267 shows the place of this work in inventories of canons’, bishops’, and lawyers’ libraries. Some of them were related to Salamanca University, and therefore familiar with Espina as a scholar, while all bought most of their books from European printers—especially those from Lyon.
- 21.
“179. Fortaleza de la fee. Dióse al señor D. Diego.” Archive of the Cathedral, Burgos Libro 39/2, fols. 425v–429r, edited by Nicolás López Martínez, “La biblioteca de Don Luis de Acuña en 1496,” Hispania 20 (1960): 81–110, at 91 and 104. Since the inventory is written in Spanish, one cannot assume that this is a translation, but rather that the scribe translated the title as he did with all the others. There is no mention of which edition of the text this was, but had it been a manuscript it would have been specified as such (as occurs in other cases in the inventory).
- 22.
François Soyer, “‘All One in Christ Jesus’?: Christian Spiritual Closeness, Genealogical Determinism and the Conversion of Jews to Christianity in Alonso de Espina’s Fortalitium Fidei (c.1458–1464),” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 17, no. 3 (2016): 239–54.
- 23.
On their use to define the customs of moriscos , see Ana Echevarria, “Food as a Custom among Spanish Muslims: from Islamic Sources to Inquisitorial Material,” in Food and Fasting. Interreligious differentiations, competition and exchange, ed. Dorothea Weltecke and Markus Stich (Cologne: Böhlau, 2017), 89–110, at 99–100.
- 24.
BRMSL 7.II.68, fol. 1; cf. Baltasar de Santa Cruz, Historia de la provincia del Santo Rosario de Filipinas, Iapon y China de la Orden de Predicadores (Zaragoza: Pasqual Bueno, 1693), 2: 316. The card is marking the practices of Muslims in book IV (fol. 270r).
- 25.
The diversity of these libraries is shown in the distribution of incunabula depicted in the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue. Convents of most mendicant orders in Europe, monasteries, and cathedral libraries all had a copy of this work, from Spain to Sweden and from Poland to Italy.
- 26.
As shown in the colophon of the Gueynard editions: “Fortalitium fidei quosque religiosis christiane adversarios aptissime confutans. Iamdudum in plerisque passibus multipliciter viciatum, nunc vero magna cum diligentia castigatum et fideliter emmendatum, per venerabilem magistrum nostrum Guillelmum Totani, in sacra pagina professorem ordinis predicatorum conventus Lugduni” (fol. 371v in both the 1511 and 1525 editions). Italics are mine.
- 27.
These changes have been checked in text samples from Burgo de Osma MS 154, BRMSL, 7.I.1 and 7.II.68 and BN Madrid INC/812. From now on, references to the text of the Fortalitium are cited from the Burgo de Osma MS 154, the closest to the author’s time.
- 28.
Some descriptions of these illuminations and their symbolism in Echevarria, Fortress, 106–7. Repeated attempts to negotiate the publication of these images have been unsuccessful.
- 29.
Echevarria, Fortress, 107–8.
- 30.
Fortalitium, Burgo de Osma MS 154, fol. 38v.
- 31.
Fortalitium, Burgo de Osma MS 154, fol. 54v.
- 32.
Fortalitium, Burgo de Osma MS 154, fol. 72r.
- 33.
Echevarria, Fortress, 108–9, 117–19; “The Polemic Use of the Crusades in Fifteenth-Century Literature of the Mendicant Orders in Spain,” in The Crusades: Other Experiences, Alternate Perspectives, ed. Khalil I. Semaan (Binghamton, NY: Global Academic, 2003), 141–60, at 159.
- 34.
Fortalitium, Burgo de Osma MS 154, fol. 174v.
- 35.
BR MS 9524 from an unknown Benedictine abbey, fols. 1v, 2v, 3r. See footnote 8.
- 36.
Biblioteca Universidad de Sevilla, fol. 10r. Online in Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes, http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/fortalitium-fidei%2D%2D6/html/ffc80cca-82b1-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_18.htm. Last checked 30/1/2019.
- 37.
Fortalitium fidei, Lyon 1511, Universidad Complutense de Madrid copy from the Colegio Menor de la Madre de Dios de la Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, fols. 2r, 3r, 67v, 106r, 240r, 346v. Online https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ucm.5315928103;q1=fortalitium%20fidei. Last checked 31/1/2019.
- 38.
Fortalitium fidei, Lyon 1525, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the sequence of pages is the same, though the initial foliation is confused (to fol. 9). Online https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ucm.5316865663;view=1up;seq=236. Last checked 31/1/2019.
- 39.
Febvre and Martin, La aparición, 223.
- 40.
Cavallero, Los enemigos, 324–25.
- 41.
Álvarez Márquez, Bibliotecas, 113.
- 42.
Soyer, “All one in Christ Jesus?” 244.
- 43.
See the article by Gretchen Starr-Le Beau in this volume.
- 44.
Yitzhak Baer, Historia de los judíos en la España cristiana (Barcelona: Ríopiedras, 1998), 719–25; Haim Beinart, Los conversos ante el tribunal de la Inquisición (Barcelona: Ríopiedras, 1983), 19–31; Stefania Pastore, Una herejía española. Conversos, alumbrados e Inquisición (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2010), 49–51.
- 45.
For this troublesome period, see José Martínez Millán, “La formación de las estructuras inquisitoriales: 1478–1520,” Hispania 153 (1983): 23–64, especially 28–32; Rafael Narbona Vizcaíno, “La introducción de la Inquisición en las ciudades de Castilla y de la Corona de Aragón,” in Tolerancia y fundamentalismos en la Historia, ed. Francisco Javier Lorenzo Pinar (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 2007), 53–98; Manuel Ruzafa, “Mudéjares, conversos e Inquisición en la Valencia del siglo XV,” in En el primer siglo de la Inquisición española, ed. José María Cruselles Gómez (Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, 2013), 43–63.
- 46.
Febvre and Martin, La aparición, 280.
- 47.
In Spanish, “costumbres, supersticiones, ceremonias y ritos.” Olivia Remie Constable, To Live Like a Moor. Christian Perceptions of Muslim Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, ed. Robin Vose (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 2.
- 48.
Robin Vose, “Introduction to inquisitorial manuals,” Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. University of Notre Dame, 2010, https://inquisition.library.nd.edu/genre/RBSC-INQ:Inquisitorial_manuals/essays/RBSC-INQ:ESSAY_InquisitorialManuals. Last checked 31/1/2019.
- 49.
Much recent research on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures & Cultures 33, no. 1 (2005) (monographic issue on Alfonso Fernández de Madrigal, El Tostado); José María Monsalvo Antón, “Impulso institucional e intelectual del estudio, c. 1380–c. 1480,” in La Universidad de Salamanca, 800 años, ed. Luis Enrique Rodríguez-San Pedro Bezares (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 2018), 51–108.
- 50.
Nicholas Eymeric, Directorium inquisitorum (Barcelona: Johannes Luschner, 1503). Vose, “Introduction.” The Seville edition, entitled Suma utilissima errorum & heresum, includes only the first 25 (of 58) quaestiones from part 2 of the Directorium. Gui’s Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis was not published until 1886 (edited by Célestin Douais, Paris: Alphonse Picard), though a manuscript copy was catalogued by the Spanish Inquisition at Madrid early in the eighteenth century (now British Library Egerton MS 1897).
- 51.
“E preguntenle del tiempo que judaizó, y tuvo error en la fe; y quanto ha que se apartó de la falsa creencia, y se arrepintió della; y de que tiempo acá dexo de guardar las dichas ceremonias. E pregúntele algunas circunstancias cerca de lo confessado, para que conoxcan los dichos inquisidores, si las tales confessiones son verdaderas, especialmente les pregunten la oración que rezan, y adonde, y con quien se ajuntauan a oir predicación cerca de la ley de Moysen.” Tomás de Torquemada, Copilación de las instruciones del Oficio de la santa Inquisición (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1630), fols. 3v–4r.
- 52.
John H. Arnold, “Inquisition, Texts and Discourse,” in Texts and the repression of medieval heresy, ed. Caterina Bruschi and Peter Biller (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2003), 63–80, at 68.
- 53.
Arnold, “Inquisition, Texts,” 68–69.
- 54.
Émile Van Balbergue and Jean-François Gilmont, “Les théologiens et la vauderie au XVe siècle,” in Miscellanea codicologica F. Masai dicata, ed. Pierre Cockshaw et al. (Ghent: Story-Scientia, 1979), 393–411, at 394–7. More recently, Franck Mercier, La Vauderie d’Arras. Une chasse aux sorcières à l’automne du Moyen Age (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006).
- 55.
Fortalitium, Burgo de Osma MS 154, fols. 41r–42v, cit. Cavallero, Los enemigos, 166–67.
- 56.
Fortalitium, Burgo de Osma MS 154, fols. 44v–52v, cit. Cavallero, Los enemigos, 169–76.
- 57.
Fortalitium, Burgo de Osma MS 154, fol. 119r; author’s translation.
- 58.
Cavallero, Los enemigos, 279–88, 314, about connections between demons and Jews, 328. See also Constanza Cavallero, “La dimensión política de la demonología cristiana en el Fortalitium Fidei de Alonso de Espina (Castilla, siglo XV): ‘A facie inimici’,” Edad Media: revista de historia 13 (2012) (Ejemplar dedicado a: La comunicación política en la Edad Media): 209–39. However, she fails to realize the importance of the taxonomy of demons for future inquisitorial work.
- 59.
Fortalitium, Burgo de Osma MS 154, fols. 184r–185.
- 60.
Arnold, “Inquisition, Texts,” 75.
- 61.
Echevarria, “Food as a Custom,” 93–96.
- 62.
Fortalitium, Burgo de Osma MS 154, fols. 39r–40v. Cavallero, Los enemigos, 255–57.
- 63.
Fortalitium, Burgo de Osma MS 154, fols. 131v–132v.
- 64.
Fortalitium, Burgo de Osma MS 154, fol. 145.
- 65.
Studied by José María Monsalvo Antón, “Herejía conversa y contestación religiosa a fines de la Edad Media. Las denuncias a la Inquisición,” Studia Historica-Historia Medieval 2, no. 2 (1984): 109–39, but without checking for the influence of any previous sources in the construction of the interrogation, or the types of errors detected: the practice of Jewish rites, superstitions and heresies, blasphemy, and skeptical pronouncements.
- 66.
Arnold, “Inquisition, Texts,” 69.
- 67.
Diego Enríquez del Castillo, Crónica de Enrique IV, ed. Aurelio Sánchez Marín (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1994), 61; cit. Baer, Historia de los judíos, 724–25; Meyuhas Ginio, La forteresse, 63–64; Echevarria, Fortress of Faith, 54.
- 68.
Carlos Carrete Parrondo (ed.), Los judeoconversos de Almazán (1501–1505), vol. 4 of Fontes Iudaeorum Regni Castellae (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia, 1986), 33, 79–80, 145–46. Alisa Meyuhas Ginio, De bello iudaeorum, fray Alonso de Espina y su Fortalitium fidei, vol. 8 of Fontes Iudaeorum Regni Castellae (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia, 1998), 219–20. Espina is believed to have died between 1461 and 1464.
- 69.
Baer, Historia de los judíos, 829–49, at 833. See also the article by Teófilo Ruiz in this volume, for more bibliography and the consequences of this trial.
- 70.
Fidel Fita, “La verdad sobre el martirio del santo niño de la guardia, ó sea el proceso y quema (16 Noviembre, 1491) del judío Jucé Franco en Ávila,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 11 (1887): 7–134, here 81–88.
- 71.
Eleazar Gutwirth, “Casta, classe i màgia: bruixes i amulets entre els jueus espanyols del segle xv,” in La Càbala: curs, ed. Ron Barkai et al. (Barcelona: Fundació Caixa de Pensions, 1989), 85–99 and “The Cuenca Amulet: History, Magic, and Manuscripts,” Sefarad 74, no. 2 (2014): 453–63, at 455. He is also mentioned in Juan Antonio Llorente, Anales de la Inquisición de España (Madrid: Ibarra, 1812), 1: 252, on May 24, 1499, when he was appointed inquisitor for the bishopric of Cádiz and part of Jerez de la Frontera.
- 72.
Isidore Loeb, Heinrich Graetz, Fidel Fita, “La Inquisición de Torquemada. Secretos íntimos,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 23 (1893): 369–434, at 391; Nicolás López Martínez, Los judaizantes castellanos y la Inquisición (Burgos: Seminario Metropolitano de Burgos, 1954), 269; Joseph Pérez, Los judíos en España (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2009), 185–86; Luis Suárez Fernández, La expulsión de los judíos. Un problema europeo (Barcelona: Ariel, 2012), 404–7.
- 73.
Adriano Duque, “Staging Martyrdom in the Trial of El Nino de la Guardia,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 10, no. 1 (2018): 88–105; Rosa Vidal Doval, “Modelos de asesinato ritual: La influencia de Fortalitium fidei en el caso del Santo Niño de La Guardia,” in Comunicación y conflicto en la cultura política peninsular (Siglos XIII al XV), ed. José Manuel Nieto Soria and Óscar Villaroel González (Madrid: Sílex, 2018), 169–88.
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Acknowledgments
A first version of this essay was presented as a Masterclass in the Department of History at the Westfälische-Wilhelm University, Münster (2017). I thank all the participants in this colloquium for their feedback. I also wish to thank Robin Vose for his suggestions and careful reading. The article is much better after that. Finally, to Remie Constable, who awakened my interest in analyzing the images of the Fortalitium in some of our last conversations. I hope she would be proud of the results.
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Appendices
Appendix: Manuscripts and Incunabula of the Fortalitium fidei
Manuscripts
MS Burgo de Osma Cathedral, 154 (1468)
MS Magdeburg, Dom-Gymnasium, 228 (1471—lost)
MS Bibliothèque Royale Albert I, Brussels (BR)—Latin 156–157 (1470–1480)
MS BR—Latin 7497 (around 1470)
MS BR—Latin 9524 (1470–1480)
MS BR—French 9007 (around 1480–1500)
MS Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris—Français, 200067–20069 (15th c.)
MS British Library, London (BL)—Royal 17.F.VI-VII (around 1480) French version
MS BL—Royal 19.E.IV (15th c.) French version
MS Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna—Latin 4045 (15th c.)
Printed Editions
Strasbourg (Johannes Mentelin) 1471–1472
Basel (Bernard Richel) 1475
Nuremberg (Antonius Koberger) 1485
Lyon (Gulielmus Balsarin) 1487
Nuremberg (Antonius Koberger) 1494
Lyon (Gulielmus Balsarin) 1500
Lyon (Guillelmus Totanus, Jean Moylin de Cambrai or Jean de Romoys for Étienne Gueynard) 1511
Carmagnola 1522 (Italian)
Lyon 1525 reprint of 1511 with slight changes
Lyon 1629 reprint of 1511 with slight changes
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Echevarria, A. (2021). The Perception of the Religious Other in Alonso de Espina’s Fortalitium Fidei: A Tool for Inquisitors?. In: Davis-Secord, S., Vicens, B., Vose, R. (eds) Interfaith Relationships and Perceptions of the Other in the Medieval Mediterranean. Mediterranean Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83997-0_6
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