Language, Authority, and Indigenous History in the 'Comentarios reales de los Incas' (Cambridge Iberian and Latin American Studies)

CAMBRIDGE IBERIAN AND LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES GENERAL EDITOR P . E . RUSSELL F . B . A .

Emeritus Professor of Spanish Studies University of Oxford ASSOCIATE EDITORS E. PUPO-WALKER

Director, Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies Vanderbilt University A. R. D. PAGDEN

Lecturer in History, University of Cambridge

Language, Authority, and Indigenous History in the Comentarios reales de los incas The Comentarios reales de los incas, a classic of Spanish Renaissance prose narrative, was written by Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, the son of an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador. It is full of ideological tensions and apparent contradictions as Garcilaso attempts to reconcile a pagan new-world culture with the fervent Christian evangelism of the period of the discovery and conquest of America. This study of the Comentarios is original both in adopting the perspective of discourse analysis and in its interdisciplinary approach. Margarita Zamora examines the rhetorical complexities of the Comentarios, and shows how, in order to present Inca civilization to Europeans, Garcilaso turned to disciplines other than traditional historiography, and in particular to the linguistic strategies of humanist philology and hermeneutics. Professor Zamora reveals how Garcilaso's views of the Incas were shaped by the dual nature of his background, by his commitment to humanism and Christianity, by the expectations he had of his readers, and by the discursive practices of his time.

CAMBRIDGE IBERIAN AND LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES HISTORY AND SOCIAL THEORY

ROBERT i. BURNS: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: Societies in symbiosis MIGHAEL p. COSTELOE: Response to Revolution: Imperial Spain and the Spanish American revolutions, 1810-1840 HEATH DILLARD: Daughters of the Reconquest: Women in Castilian town society, 1100-1300

JOHN EDWARDS: Christian Cordoba: The city and its region in the late Middle Ages LEONARD FOLGARAIT: SO Far from Heaven: David Alfaro Siqueiros' 'The March of Humanity' and Mexican revolutionary politics DAVID THATCHER GIES'.Theatre and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Spain: Juan de Grimaldi as impresario and government agent JUAN LOPEZ-MORILLAS: The Krausist Movement and Ideological Change in Spain, 1854-1874 MARVIN LUNENFELD: Keepers of the City: The corregidores of Isabella I of Castile (I474-i5°4) LINDA MARTZ: Poverty and Welfare in Habsburg Spain: The example of Toledo ANTHONY PAGDEN: The Fall of Natural Man: the American Indian and the origins of comparative ethnology EVELYN s. PROCTER: Curia and Cortes in Leon and Castile, ioy2-12$5 A. c. DE c. M. SAUNDERS: i4 Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, H4I-I555 DAVID E. VASSBERG: Land and Society in Golden Age Castile KENNETH B . WOLF: Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain LITERATURE AND LITERARY THEORY

STEVEN BOLDY: The Novels of Julio Cortdzar ANTHONY j . CASCARDI: The Limits of Illusion: A critical study of Calderon MAURICE HEMINGWAY: Emilia Pardo Bazdn: The making of a novelist B. w. I F E : Reading and Fiction in Golden Age Spain: A Platonist critique and some picaresque replies JOHN KING: Sur: A study of the Argentine literary journal and its role in the development of a culture, 1931 -1 gyo JOHN LYON: The Theatre of Valle-Incldn BERNARD MCGUIRK & RICHARD CARDWELL ( e d s . ) : Gabriel Garcia Mdrquez:

New readings JULIAN OLIVARES: The Love Poetry of Francisco de Quevedo: An aesthetic and existential study FRANCISCO RICO: The Spanish Picaresque Novel and the Point of View HENRY w. SULLIVAN: Calderon in the German Lands and the Low Countries: His reception and influence, 1654-1980 DIANE F . UREY: Galdos and the Irony of Language MARGARITA ZAMORA: Language, Authority, and Indigenous History in the Comentarios reales de los incas

Language, authority, and indigenous history in the Comentarios reales de los incas

MARGARITA ZAMORA Assistant Professor of Spanish and Ibero-American Studies University of Wisconsin,

Madison

The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584.

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE NEW YORK

NEW ROGHELLE

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Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP 32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1988 First published 1988 British Library cataloguing in publication data

Zamora, Margarita Language, authority and indigenous history in the Comentarios reales de los incas. - (Cambridge Iberian and Latin American studies). 1. Comentarios reales de los incas 1. Title 9851.00498 F3429 Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

Zamora, Margarita. Language, authority, and indigenous history in the Comentarios reales de los incas. (Cambridge Iberian and Latin American studies) Bibliography. Includes index. 1. Vega, Garcilaso de la, 1539-1616. Comentarios reales de los incas. 2. Incas. 3. Peru - History - To 1548. 4. Peru - History - 1548-1820. 5. Peru - History To 1548 - Historiography. 1. Title. 11. Series. F3429.V3873Z36 1988 985'.O2 87-25581 ISBN o 521 35087 5

Transferred to digital printing 2004

To Salvador M. Cruxent and Margarita Backs de Cruxent

Contents

Preface

page ix

1

Introduction

i

2

Language and history: Renaissance humanism and the philologic tradition

12

3

Language and history in the Comentarios reales

39

4

Philology, translation, and hermeneutics in the Comentarios reales

62

5

Contexts and intertexts: the discourse on the nature of the American indian and the Comentarios reales 85

6

"Nowhere" is somewhere: the Comentarios reales

7

and the Utopian model

129

Epilogue

166

Notes

169

Bibliography

189

Index

201

Vll

Preface

This book originated during my years of graduate study at Yale University. It is a product of the stimulus provided by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria and a dedicated group of graduate students toward the reevaluation of the works of the Spanish American colonial period. For their inspiration and camaraderie I will always be grateful. I also owe thanks to Francisco Fernandez Turienzo whose knowledge of Renaissance thought helped guide my studies of humanism. Both Professors Fernandez Turienzo and Gonzalez Echevarria generously allowed me access to their unpublished manuscripts, as did Diana Gibson, who shared work in progress and valuable bibliographical information. My work also benefitted from the criticism generously given by Margaret Ferguson, whose insights on humanist irony helped shape my arguments on the role of irony in the Comentarios reales, and from conversations with Sarah Lawall, Rolena Adorno, and Irlemar Chiampi, all of whom have left their mark on my work in often unforeseen ways. My colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Steve Stern, and Thomas Skidmore, have been a source of personal encouragement. I must also thank Frank Salomon for his insights on the Quechua language and Andean religious thought. To David Henige, who read through early drafts of this book and whose acute criticisms and bibliographical suggestions helped sharpen the articulation of my arguments, I owe a special debt of gratitude. I would also like to thank Laura Chesak for her help in compiling the English translations, David Dean for providing me with access to both his staff and computer equipment, and Judith Green without whose help and encouragement this book might never have been completed. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the material support provided by the National Defense Education Act Title vi Fellowships, Yale University, the Cyril W. Nave Bequest, and the University of Wisconsin Foundation. ix

I

Introduction

Garcilaso Inca de la Vega was born Gomez Suarez de Figueroa in Peru in 1539, just seven years after the first official encounter between Incas and Spaniards took place at Cajamarca. 1 His father, Sebastian Garcilaso de la Vega, was a Spanish officer while his mother, Chimpu Ocllo, was an Inca palla, or princess of the royal family. Although they never married, the captain and thepalla had at least two children and lived together for some ten years, until he took a Spanish bride. Garcilaso remained in his father's household until the latter's death in 1559, although he apparently also kept in close and frequent contact with his mother and her family. As a mestizo, offspring of the union between an Amerindian and a Spaniard, both of whom were prominent residents of Cuzco, Garcilaso grew up in the privileged position of being able to learn the ways of two vastly different cultures and to witness the process of conquest from the perspectives of both the conquerors and the conquered. His earliest education seems to have been in Quechua, the language he considered his native tongue. Through his mother and the elders of her family, Garcilaso was introduced to the history and customs of the Incas. From comments he interspersed throughout his works we know that gatherings of the Incan side of the family were frequent and usually had a didactic effect on the young Garcilaso, who loved to hear stories of the empire's former grandeur and to satiate his curiosity with probing questions on life in Tahuantinsuyu, as the Inca empire was called in Quechua, before the arrival of the Europeans. Very little is known of his formal education. He alludes to it apologetically in his works, in a style that is reminiscent of the rhetorical formula of false modesty, but a similar reference in a personal letter suggests that his modesty reflected his formal instruction accurately. Writing to the antiquarian Fernandez Franco, Garcilaso speaks of a limited and sporadic exposure to the fundamentals of Latin as a child

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INTRODUCTION

in Cuzco, which came to an abrupt conclusion when Garcilaso was approximately fourteen years old. He relates that he and his classmates turned to the "exercise of horses and arms" when the last of a series of seven tutors departed during the increasingly turbulent times of the Peruvian civil wars.2 Garcilaso received a small inheritance upon his father's death so that he could travel to Spain to complete his education and in 1560, at the age of twenty-one, he left Peru never to return again. There is no indication that he ever pursued formal studies in Europe. His own explanation of how he acquired the skills necessary for his literary achievements is not without irony. He joined the army, Garcilaso explains, but the lack of royal recognition for his military efforts in the Alpujarras wars, in which he served as captain in the King's forces (1570-1), coupled with too much leisure time upon his return to civilian life, turned him from soldier into student. All indications suggest that Garcilaso was essentially an autodidact. The inventory of his library, together with the evidence provided by his works, testify to his command of the knowledge and skills of a highly educated humanist. The contents of the library reveal that his intellectual interests ranged from European and New World history to the history of classical and Christian antiquity. Although it is sometimes difficult to determine from the hastily written inventory which books were in the original languages and which in Spanish translations, it is clear that Garcilaso knew Latin. The presence of a Greek grammar in the collection suggests at least a working knowledge of the second great classical language to which the humanists were so devoted. The inventory also indicates a predilection for writers of the Italian Renaissance and an interest in rhetoric, as evidenced by the presence in the collection of works by Cicero, the Rhetoric of Aristotle, as well as the Arte rhetorica of Francisco de Castro, who dedicated the work to Garcilaso. Typically for an educated Christian of the period, the inventory indicates that he also owned a considerable number of devotional works.3 Garcilaso settled in Montilla, a small town in southern Spain where his father's brother, Alonso de Vargas, had his estate. There he wrote his first three works, La traduccion del indio de los tres didlogos de

amor de Leon Hebreo (1590), a translation from Italian of Leon Hebreo's (Judah Abarbanel) Neoplatonic dialogues;4 the Relation de la descendencia de Garci Perez de Vargas (1596), a genealogy of the Vargas

branch of the family; and La Florida del Inca (1605), an account of the

INTRODUCTION

3

exploration and conquest of Florida. In 1591, after his uncle's death, Garcilaso moved to Cordoba where he completed his masterpiece, the Comentarios reales de los incas (1609), an interpretation of the history and culture of the Incas, and its sequel the Historia general del Peru (published posthumously in 1617), devoted to the history of the conquest and colonization of Peru by the Spaniards. Garcilaso enjoys a privileged position in the history of Spanish American writing. He was the first New World native and the first person of Amerindian descent to be published and read widely throughout Europe.5 In the Comentarios reales he became the first writer to attempt to incorporate indigenous elements into a Western discourse, in effect transforming the way a European audience conceived of Inca history and culture. This study explores the rhetorical and conceptual models which enabled him to achieve that goal.6 It also attempts to explain the originality of Garcilaso's literary achievement and the goals and intentions of his undertaking. By considering both the formal and conceptual aspects of the text as narrative strategies with specific objectives and results, I hope to show that for Garcilaso the conquest and colonization of the New World was not only a military struggle but, perhaps more significantly, a discursive one. Garcilaso's task in the Comentarios reales was to reconcile the Inca experience of the past with the European world view, in an attempt to restore and ultimately to vindicate the indigenous tradition. But perhaps the most transcendental aspect of the work is that in opening up Western discourse to accommodate Amerindian elements, the Comentarios reales in effect inverted the process of conquest in its discursive dimension. European writing on the New World typically excluded, condemned or, at the very least, marginalized indigenous culture. Garcilaso, however, sought to reconcile the oppositions and contradictions that he perceived in those discourses in order to achieve the Renaissance ideal of concordia, or the conciliation of opposites. In the final analysis, his interpretation of Inca civilization strives to demonstrate the fundamental complementarity of New World and Christian histories. In this study I focus on the role that language plays in the Comentarios reales - first, as part of a rhetorical strategy for the revision of what Garcilaso considers the false versions of Inca history written by Spaniards, and then, as an essential component in the process of integration and synthesis of two widely divergent worlds — the Incan and the European. I argue that the intellectual world that Garcilaso

4

INTRODUCTION

entered upon his arrival in Spain was steeped in humanist linguistic thought and practice; just as the one he had left behind in Peru had been preoccupied with the relation of language to the politics of conquest and religious indoctrination.7 Thus, it was language that provided him with the contours of his argument. The narration of the Amerindian past is conceived in the Comentarios reales as an act of translation, in the broadest and most ambitious sense of the term. But it is Renaissance linguistic theory and practice that informs, in very concrete and specific ways, the formal strategies of the text. Garcilaso's personal associations with a circle of Andalusian philologists and biblical exegetes left an indelible mark on his intellectual formation and gave a unique shape to the narration of the past in the Comentarios reales.

Hayden White reminds us that all historical writing is ideologically marked, and insofar as historical texts present a certain view of the historical record they employ a series of narrative tactics of emplotment and argumentation in order to render that record intelligible to the intended audience.8 In this way, unprocessed historical material is transformed to mirror the ideology of both the historian and the audience. The Comentarios reales is an interesting case, however, because while Garcilaso addressed a Christian European readership working within a familiar ideological framework, the rhetorical strategies in the text point to a double intention. They are directed at integrating indigenous elements which had previously been incomprehensible, and therefore unacceptable, to that audience while at the same time subverting the unflattering and unsympathetic versions of Inca history and culture sanctioned by the Spanish Crown. Implicit in Garcilaso's interpretation of Incan Peru, for example, is the idea that the pagan Incas played a privileged role in Christian history. This claim not only undermines the ideological premises which had been invoked to justify the conquest, but more importantly, it is nothing short of a devastating indictment of the Spanish destruction of Inca civilization. It is a tribute to Garcilaso's remarkable rhetorical abilities that the Comentarios reales received the official approval of the Inquisition and the Crown and was published, uncensored, in 1609. Throughout the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth centuries, when the Comentarios reales was regarded as the final word on the history and culture of the Incas, Garcilaso's authority and prestige as historian of pre-Hispanic Peru was unrivaled. Consequently, the Comentarios reales has usually been studied in relation to

INTRODUCTION

5

historiographical criteria. Even when scholars have arrived at the conclusion that it is not a history, in the usual sense, historiographical considerations have provided the basis of comparison and evaluation. With the rise of rationalist and positivist historiography, study of the work was focused for many years in the history versus fiction debate. In 1905, Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo affirmed that the Comentarios reales was not a history at all but a Utopian novel, in the tradition of More, Campanella, and Harrington. 9 But well before Menendez y Pelayo's literary evaluation of the fictionality of the work, several historians had questioned Garcilaso's reliability and integrity as a narrator of history. Robertson initiated the unfavorable re-evaluation by questioning his frequent use of secondary sources as well as his apparent inability to discriminate between the factual and the fabulous.10 Prescott echoed Robertson's misgivings about Garcilaso's credulity, suggesting that he was a gossip and an egomaniac.11 In Peru, a heated polemic arose over Garcilaso's use of sources. Gonzalez de la Rosa charged that he was a plagiarizer who had lifted the better part of his history of the Incas from secondary sources, especially the Valera manuscript Garcilaso frequently cites. Riva Agiiero defended Garcilaso's integrity and objectivity.12 Since then, Sanchez, Porras Barrenechea, Miro Quesada, and Durand have all argued in support of Garcilaso's accuracy and integrity as a historian, if not of his impartiality.13 His defenders notwithstanding, Garcilaso's feeling for the Incas together with his Renaissance penchant for literary creativity have served to all but exclude him from the current historiographical canon. It is important to note, however, that his contemporaries did not consider the Comentarios reales to be fictional; nor were public attempts made to discredit the work or its author. It was approved, published, and read as a presumably truthful and accurate account of Inca civilization. While we might be tempted to attribute this to naivete on the part of an audience composed primarily of the learned and influential, or to an unlikely liberalism in the heart of CounterReformation Spain, we must once again credit Garcilaso's acute command of the rhetorical and conceptual models available to him. For later readers the codes employed by Garcilaso were no longer familiar, often resulting in confusion and misunderstanding. The impassioned and protracted polemic over Garcilaso's integrity and authority served to underline the crucial role that the Comentarios reales has played in the emerging Peruvian national culture, first in

O

INTRODUCTION

forging the most influential image of Peru's pre-Hispanic past, and later as the literary symbol of Peru's indo-hispanic nationalist cultural identity.14 The transition from studying the work as historical document to interpreting it as symbolic representation constitutes a significant cultural reclassification, marking its passage from the discipline of history to that of literature. But its cultural importance has only intensified as a result. Literary studies have tended to emphasize the fictional or creative aspects of the work at the expense of other characteristics, particularly its documentary value. In the works of Durand, Miro Quesada, and Pupo-Walker the argument has taken a more sensitive and sophisticated form, however, for instead of viewing its fictional or historical qualities as irreconcilable value judgments, these critics emphasize their harmonious coexistence in the text. Durand and, especially, Pupo-Walker have studied this aspect from the perspective of the personal dimension of Garcilaso's account, which has enabled them to reconcile its subjectivity and imaginative characteristics within a historical framework.15 Paradoxically, however, to recognize the historical nature of the text while emphasizing its creative or inventive aspects does not effectively clarify the fundamental generic questions that have been raised. In the sixteenth century the lines between history and fiction were not clearly drawn. Historical texts availed themselves of fictional or imaginative devices to enhance their narrative, and fiction masqueraded as history in an attempt to bolster its own questionable authority. Cervantes parodied this ambivalence in his "history" of Don Quijote de la Mancha. 16 Aristotle had clearly separated the two in the Poetics when he affirmed that actual deeds were the province of history while the probable or possible were that of poetry.17 But Aristotle's definition spoke only of the appropriate content of poetical and historical works, not of their formal characteristics. Indeed, his brief statement on the question of form leads one to believe that he felt the issue to be irrelevant: whether in verse or in prose Herodotus' work would always be a history, he affirmed. Cicero, the other major source for humanist historiography had, however, made important statements about the writing of history in De oratore. Consequently, the humanists came to regard history as a branch of rhetoric, as an instrument of persuasion which would move the reader to virtuous action imitative of the heroes whose deeds were represented in histories. The ultimate purpose of history was to teach by example. As

INTRODUCTION

J

Gilbert puts it, "Not factual completeness and accuracy, but moral guidance was expected from the true historian, and he was therefore permitted to select and stylize events from the past."18 Thus, the subject matter of history must be based on actual events in order to be didactically useful, as Aristotle required, but the form of the expression had to comply with rhetorical and literary criteria of elegant and persuasive prose. Stylistically, the representation of the historical material had as its primary purpose not the communication of strictly factual information, but the shaping of the past into an aesthetically effective and rhetorically convincing form. Studies like Durand's and Pupo-Walker's are essential to understanding Garcilaso's work, for in recognizing the fundamental duality of his narrative they have allowed us to leave behind once and for all the critical absolutism of earlier approaches, revealing a more complex vision of the work. However, the "creative history" approach still limits us to a twodimensional reading. Moreover, it leaves us with a nagging question: Is the Comentarios reales simply a typical Renaissance history? The history/fiction idiom is a restricted model from which to read the Comentarios reales because it limits the discursive possibilities of the text to two clearly delineated types. It starts from the premise that every utterance can be classified either as historical, that is strictly referential, or as creative, where the narration of the past is embellished through fictional resources or transformed through the interjection of the personal feelings and circumstances of the author, or simply invented. In the case of the Comentarios reales the imaginative dimension of the discourse is manifested primarily through the intense subjectivity that Garcilaso's personal memories introduce into the narration of the historical material. But, if one were to follow this argument to its logical conclusion, it must also include all of the dialogues represented in the text, all but the most literal of Garcilaso's interpretations, the narration of tales and anecdotes, the representation of characters, the symbolic or metaphorical nature of many passages, and the like. Such an approach lacks specificity for it obliges us to lump together a wide variety of discursive forms, obscuring much of the richness and originality of Garcilaso's rhetorical achievement. In fact, the rhetorical models he employs in the Comentarios reales are many and varied. They are by no means limited to Renaissance historical discourse or the just-emerging fictional genres which in the fifteenth century took the form of the "novels" of chivalry, and in the sixteenth that of the

8

INTRODUCTION 19

picaresque narratives. Garcilaso borrows from the Hebraeo-Christian tradition of biblical hermeneutics, forensics, Utopian discourse, philology, theology, and from the chronicles and missionary narratives describing the newly discovered peoples, as well as from a variety of fictional models, to mention only the most obvious examples, in order to persuade his readers to reject the negative image of the Incas found in the Spanish histories in favor of a new interpretation in which the Amerindian element is shown to be an indispensable component of Christian world history. One final issue should be addressed before concluding this orientation - the matter of the supposed lack of authenticity of Garcilaso's representation of Inca history and culture. This objection has been voiced particularly by anthropologists. In comparative studies of the Comentarios reales and indigenous narratives of the same period, such as Wachtel's article on Garcilaso and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Garcilaso's European acculturation is often contrasted to the more typically Andean vision of other native narrators.20 But when one speaks of lack of authenticity in the Comentarios reales one cannot afford to overlook the fact that Garcilaso addresses precisely that same issue throughout his work. He phrases it, however, in sixteenth-century terms. The nature of those terms will be examined in the second and third chapters of this study. For now it is important to remember that the modern concept of authenticity has been shaped by nineteenthcentury positivism. We understand an "authentic" experience to mean one that is empirical and verifiable. Viewed from this perspective, a faithful and authentic representation is one which attempts to represent that experience realistically by literally creating the illustion of objectivity and immediacy. But during the Renaissance, knowledge was considered the product of interpretation; as Foucault puts it "The function proper to knowledge is not seeing or demonstrating, it is interpreting."21 In the sixteenth century the transmission of truth was conceived of as an act of mediation. Accordingly, Garcilaso defines his narrative task in the prologue to the Comentarios reales precisely as an interpretation of Inca civilization. And when he claims that his story is a true one, he is defining truth in a hermeneutical sense, as an act of mediation which is faithful to the essence or "idea" of the original, in the Platonic sense. Garcilaso sought to render Inca civilization truthfully and faithfully, as those terms were understood in his day, but most importantly, to do so in a manner that would be intelligible and persuasive to his audience. The Comentarios reales could be described

INTRODUCTION

9

then as an essentially rhetorical work, whose purpose it is to convince at least as much as to inform. That is, in fact, what Garcilaso suggests in his proem where he tells the reader that his purpose is not to contradict the historical record but to explain it by serving as a commentator and interpreter. The rhetorical character of the work underscores Garcilaso's commitment to the Amerindian cause. It also reveals, however, the extreme complexity of the terms of that commitment, as will be seen in the pages that follow. If we were to subject the Comentarios reales to a modern anthropological critique we might be tempted to criticize Garcilaso for what seem to us to be distortions of Andean reality. But in doing so we would be obliged to recognize that we were imposing our own discursive prejudices on a Renaissance work. If, on the other hand, our intention is to understand how a Peruvian mestizo of the sixteenth century sees the historical relationship between Inca civilization and the Spanish conquest, and how he translates that perception into an effective rhetorical strategy to vindicate the conquered in the aggressor's own terms - then we must read the Comentarios reales utilizing the same rhetorical and conceptual models available to Garcilaso and his readers in the sixteenth century. Although it would be naive to believe that one can completely overcome the limitations imposed by one's historical perspective, and presumptuous to claim absolute accuracy of interpretation, the responsible reader must strive to approach the text in a manner consistent with the discursive possibilities available to Garcilaso and his intended audience. The question of Garcilaso's intended audience is particularly important because it makes the rhetorical choices of the author intelligible and helps avoid anachronistic interpretations and inappropriate comparisons. The Comentarios reales is addressed to an educated and influential minority of Christian European readers. Clearly, it was not intended for the vast majority of illiterate Europeans, nor for the Indians and mestizos of Peru, most of whom could not read Spanish and who, moreover, would not have needed Garcilaso to interpret indigenous history for them. Thus, the text employs indigenous materials in a manner which strives to be faithful to the native tradition by representing it in ways that are rigorously consistent with sixteenthcentury norms for the representation of truth and, at the same time, to render that material intelligible and acceptable to its intended audience. This becomes clearer if one understands Garcilaso's fidelity as having a double purpose. The Comentarios reales attempts to be simul-

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INTRODUCTION

taneously faithful to its referent, Inca history and culture, and to its rhetorical goals of transforming European discourse on the Amerindian. Against a discourse of irreconcilable oppositions he proposes a rewriting of New World history which would be consistent with the Renaissance ideal of concordia, where cultures once seen as antipodal can finally coexist in harmony. There can be little doubt that the Comentanos reales de los incas is a committed work, and it is to Garcilaso's credit that he never loses sight of the essentially persuasive nature of his enterprise. The methodology I employ in this study emphasizes literary discourse analysis, since it is both the field in which I have formally trained and the one which has generated the greatest interest in the Comentanos reales in recent years, but it is also interdisciplinary, in accordance with the hybrid nature of Garcilaso's own work. There are three aspects of the approach that deserve special mention. First, this study strives to be consistent with the historical and cultural contexts from which the Comentanos reales arose, attempting to interpret the text in light of the conceptual and rhetorical models available to Garcilaso in the sixteenth century. Secondly, I consider the meaning of the text as a product of the interaction between the content and the manner in which that content is articulated. The basic assumption is that the meaning of an utterance is ultimately as much the result oihow it is said as of what is said. And, finally, a clarification about the selection of the object of the study. The Comentanos reales and the Historia general del Peru were

conceived by Garcilaso as two parts of a whole which would present the pre-Hispanic and Hispanic stages of Peruvian history as a coherent unit. However, they have traditionally been published and studied as autonomous, though related, works. The most obvious difference that separates the two texts is their subject matter; the Comentanos reales focuses almost exclusively on Inca civilization while the Historia general deals with the Spanish conquest and colonization. Although Garcilaso places all of Peruvian history on the same historical continuum, the Amerindian culture all but fades out of the picture when Garcilaso begins the narration of postconquest history. At the formal level as well, the differences between the Historia general and the Comentarios reales are more significant than their similarities. The conceptual and rhetorical exigencies of narrating the Amerindian past, so foreign to his intended audience, forced Garcilaso to stretch the resources of sixteenth-century historiography well beyond its

INTRODUCTION

II

limits, as the pages that follow will show. His narration of Spanish colonial history, on the other hand,fitcomfortably within the bounds of Renaissance historical discursive norms. It is a much more typical and consequently more accessible example of its genre. This is the first book-length study devoted exclusively to the Comentarios reales and, as such, it continues the tradition of seeing the two volumes of Garcilaso's history of Peru as separate and autonomous in very significant ways. My purpose in focusing on the Comentarios reales was not to deny the validity or fruitfulness of studying both works as parts of a whole, but to underscore the unique characteristics of this classic and much debated text in greater depth and detail than would be possible in a more general study of Garcilaso's oeuvre. A few words about the chapters which follow may help to guide the reader. Chapter 2 is devoted to Renaissance philosophy of language and humanist philology as a strategy of religious reform. It provides indispensable background information for situating Garcilaso's discursive strategies in their historico-conceptual context. The third chapter explores the relations between humanist linguistic thought, Garcilaso's concept of historical truth, and the forging of his authorial persona. It opens with a discussion of the particular demands placed on historiographical notions of truth and narrative authority by the discovery of the New World. The chapter culminates with an analysis of the development of Garcilaso's narrative authority and his idearium on language. Chapter 4 examines how humanist philologic strategies shape the narration of Inca history and culture. The fifth chapter relates Garcilaso's discursive strategies to his intentions and purposes by exploring the intertextual relations between the Comentarios reales and the texts that constitute the sixteenth-century debate on the nature of the Amerindians. Finally, chapter 6 explores the function of the Utopian model in the Comentarios reales as the essential model for a complex strategy of cultural translation, which mediates the conciliation of oppositions and contradictions that dominated European discourse on the history and culture of the indigenous peoples of America.

Language and history: Renaissance humanism and the philologic tradition

If one central concern can be singled out in that eclectic period which comprises the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it is language. Humanism was not so much interested in linguistics in an abstract sense but with the power of the word in action. Nancy Struever has shown that humanist linguistic thought is greatly indebted to the sophist rhetorical tradition as interpreted in Latin by the great Roman rhetoricians Cicero and Quintillian. "Renaissance language theorists," and here she cites Petrarch and the nominalist, William of Occam, especially, "repeat some of the basic moments of sophistic thought in their attempt to reassess the relation of language to being, their emphasis on the mediating power of language, and their sense of role as derived from language skill."1 Humanism conceived of discourse as leading to decision, of language as a motivator of human choice and action. The attack mounted by Renaissance humanism against scholasticism was founded not so much on a rejection of the basic tenets of medieval speculative philosophy as on a total repudiation of the purely formal character of terministic logic and its ossified discourse. The scholastic dialectician's insistence on the priority of thought over speech and the subsequent subordination of the sciences of discourse to dialectics was countered by the humanists with a declaration of the primacy of linguistic eloquence in all intellectual activity. 2 As Trapezuntius put it, "For indeed, reason itself lies hidden in the obscure processes of the intellect before it has been drawn forth by speech; it has just so much light or brilliance as the fire hidden in the flint, before one strikes it: indeed, while it is hidden no one would think to call it fire."3 Elocuentia, the art of verbal persuasion, was seen as an essential element of humanistic learning; or as Lorenzo Valla called it, "rerum regina . . . et perfecta sapientia." The emphasis the humanists placed on linguistic eloquence was based on the belief that the function of knowledge was not merely to 12

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uncover truths; it should also impel one toward its acceptance and application. Although the Middle Ages did not ignore the study of rhetoric it subordinated the philosophy of language characteristic of classical rhetorical theory and its creative application to a pragmatism based on imitation and exercise. Medieval treatises on the subject were predominantly "how to" manuals which offered advice and concrete examples to solve specific rhetorical problems. The artes dictaminis, devoted to the composition of official documents and letters, typically set forth the general rules for the drafting of all types of letters or merely offered a series of models to be imitated by notaries. The artes poetnae formed part of the discipline of grammar and as such were intended for pedagogical use to teach verse composition. Even the artes praedicandi, closest to classical rhetoric in spirit since they were the only one of the medieval arts to deal with the spoken word, were generally concerned with the exposition of elaborate techniques for composing thematic sermons.4 Humanists, in contrast, insisted that the power of speech was mankind's most distinguishing and noble characteristic, that the beauty and clarity of language were inseparable from correct thinking, and that knowledge was meaningless unless it led to virtuous deeds. Erasmus, in his colloquy "Convivium religiosum," has one of the characters express the humanist attitude: "I would rather let all of Scotus and others of this sort perish than the books of a single Cicero or Plutarch. Not that I condemn the former entirely, but I perceive I am helped by reading the others, whereas I rise from the reading of these somehow less enthusiastic about virtue, but more disputatious."5 The humanist conception of language as the fundamental mediating element between perception and reality, human knowledge and deed yields a concept of history as interpretation and action, not necessarily in the strict physical sense but above all as the movement of the human will to evaluation and choice. Struever has shown that the antilogies or debates in Leonardo Bruni's History ofFlorence, like his use of irony, make demands on the reader to compare, evaluate, and draw conclusions: "the [humanist] historian's task is to place alternatives before the reader. The function of the historian is not merely to describe but to initiate dialogue. Bruni uses his rhetorical discipline to define and shape the political choices in history . . ."6 It is in this context which conceives of history as an active discourse, which uses language to move the will of the reader to evaluation and choice as well as to represent and preserve the past that one must situate the

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discussion of the role of language in the Comentarios reales. Garcilaso's conception of the role of discourse in historiography coincides perfectly with the humanist conception of history as magistra vitae, as a discourse which both represents the exemplary and impels the reader to action imitating the example. Indeed, all of Garcilaso's historical works deal explicitly or implicitly with the conquest of America as it was, but more importantly, as it should have been or should be. In La Florida del Inca his intentions are clearly defined in the prologue. In addition to recording the brave deeds of Spaniards and Indians "Our purpose in offering this description has been to encourage [my emphasis] Spain to make an effort to acquire and populate this kingdom (now that its unsavory reputation for being sterile and swampy, as it is along the coast, has been erased)." The purpose of colonization in Garcilaso's view is to augment the number of the faithful and to cultivate the land in order to make it more productive for Spaniard and Indian alike. In the Comentarios reales and its sequel, the Historia general del Peru, the narrative has as its objective the harmonious integration of indigenous and Christian history with the view of creating a truly mestizo society in Peru. In the Comentarios reales, however, an essentially rhetorical conception of history is accompanied by very specific ideas on how language becomes a vehicle for gaining access to the past, for restoring it in authentic form, and for mediating the interpretation of the historical material. Garcilaso's strategies for recovering and representing the Inca past are tied to the humanist traditions of text restoration, translation and exegesis, an exegesis most closely associated not with historiography (although writers like Lorenzo Valla and Jean Bodin availed themselves of the method for historiographical purposes) but with the disciplines of grammar and theology and, more specifically, their point of intersection in the field of textual studies. The humanists' return to the texts of both pagan and Christian antiquity was motivated in no small part by an interest in the theory and practice of language these represent. Although the process of restoring classical texts was begun soon after the disintegration of the Roman Empire and sustained throughout the Middle Ages, the purpose and the methods with which the humanists approached these sources demonstrate a significant change in attitude. The emphasis placed on language usage, on the form of the expression, fostered a renewed commitment to the study of the written word in its precise function and meaning. The task of the humanist, therefore,

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was to establish the text as an integral and concrete experience in the past. By means of grammatical and rhetorical erudition each word was examined and defined in its precise historical context in order to determine its original meaning and connotations accurately. During the Middle Ages, antiquity had been deformed tofitmedieval cultural norms. Ovid was read, but it was an adulterated, highly moralized version of Ovid. The Vulgate translation of the Bible differed significantly from the Hebrew and Greek originals. The Renaissance, however, acutely conscious of the historical autonomy of classical texts, initiated a return to a more authentic version of ancient texts. The early humanists, and Petrarch is an excellent example, were collectors of manuscripts and interested above all in a firsthand, historically precise study of the original language texts.7 Philology was not a Renaissance invention, however. In the third century BC, under the protection of the first Ptolemies, Alexandria was a center of philological research, with a library housing a manuscript collection of over 500,000 scrolls. The early Church Fathers, especially St. Jerome, had also availed themselves of the philologic method of exegesis to interpret the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts for the correction of the Latin Bible. They noted variant readings in both Latin and Greek texts and evaluated the Latin version in light of the original language. But from the eighth to the end of the fourteenth century the study of the first languages of the Bible all but disappeared among Christian scholars. Bentley has pointed out that only toward the end of the Middle Ages did a few Christians like Roger Bacon, Ramon Lull, and Pierre d'Ailly begin to advocate the revival of the study of the biblical languages, although their call went unheeded.8 Not until 1397, with the arrival of Manuel Chrysoloras in Florence, was the study of Greek revived in Europe; yet it did not become a part of university curricula until the mid-fifteenth century. Medieval textual exegesis is exemplified in the work of Nicholas of Lyra. In his commentaries Postilla litteralis (1322-31) and Postilla moralis (1339) Nicholas applied scholastic theology, Aristotelian philosophy and a knowledge of Hebrew (though not Greek) to an exegesis of the Bible which combined some correction of the Latin Vulgate text of the Old Testament based on the Hebrew original, with literal, spiritual, and allegorical commentary. For Nicholas, notes Bentley, "the New Testament confirmed medieval doctrines and was in turn illuminated by medieval theology, philosophy and science . . . Lyra's work throws more light on medieval thought and values than on those

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of the early Christian world. The authors of the New Testament wrote their works unburdened by scholastic categories of grace and faith, medieval theology of the sacraments, or the fine points of Aristotle's teachings. To explain the New Testament with reference to these things is necessarily to distort the original meaning of the Christian scriptures."9 Clearly, it would be inaccurate to state that philology was born of humanism. Even so there is a fundamental difference between the traditional philologist's approach to text restoration and exegesis and what Struever has called the humanists' "program," their concern with why a particular text should be established and their rigorous adherence to the grammatico-historical determination of the original meaning. For the humanist exegetes philology constituted the only valid access to the true meaning of the original text. They were committed to reconstructing the cultures of antiquity in as undistorted a form as possible. Philological concerns then were not accidental to the development of humanism; they were essential to it. The praise of classical eloquence was both a defense of the authentic language of the classical age against the ravages it had suffered in the Middle Ages and of the theory of discourse it represented. The goal was to revive antiquity through the extant texts in its pristine form. The discovery of documentary falsifications and false attributions, the need to uncover texts and revive them in authentic form by studying and collating codices, and correcting and restoring texts to their unadulterated form are all indications of humanism's fundamental concern with establishing a more faithful vantage point from which to view the past. Frank Kermode underscores the significance of philological developments to the development of historical perspective in the Renaissance: "We sometimes think of the Renaissance as a sort of humanist philological house-cleaning, as indeed it was; and we think of it as the moment when antiquity could first be seen in historical perspective, a culture remote in time but admired and imitated, separated from our own by a medium aevum"10 Language, then, provided the humanist access to the historical past and philology was that science of language which made the recovery of the past in authentic form possible. Unique to humanist philological practice was the fact that it transformed the method into a strategy to bring about the downfall of scholastic intellectual authority in both the secular and religious

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domains. The humanist grammarian's claim to an interpretative prerogative supported by a command of the original language effectively neutralized all other approaches to the written word. For an analysis which established the precise historical meaning of the text was able to discredit other commentary simply by demonstrating that its premises were founded on historically mistaken linguistic assumptions. The essentially ahistorical scholastic view of language, which established meaning through traditional logical discussions, was successfully challenged by humanist philologic exegesis, founded on the authority of the original word. The humanist view of language as an instrument of correction, persuasion, and reform must have been extremely seductive to Garcilaso as he contemplated his response to the vision of indigenous history presented by European chroniclers of the discovery and conquest of America. The intent to forge a favorable image of the Amerindian, persuade the reader to accept it, and move the authorities to actions consistent with the nature of that image is already evident in his earliest endeavor to represent the Amerindian as a historical figure in La Florida. But unique to the Comentarios reales is that humanist theory of language not only provides the conceptual framework for the narrative but that the specific linguistic methodologies of humanism become the vehicles for the expression and interpretation of the indigenous past. Humanist attitudes toward language are in fact essentially pragmatic. The linguistic fervor evident throughout the Renaissance was not a speculative enterprise so much as an applied science. As the grammarian Antonio de Nebrija advised Queen Isabel, the study of language was an integral part of the building of an empire. The monumental task of study and preservation of the Amerindian tongues undertaken by the missionary friars was the cornerstone of Christian evangelical efforts in the New World. The study of the languages of antiquity — Greek, Hebrew, Latin — was motivated by a desire to revitalize a culture perceived as stagnant. In both the secular and religious domains philology was used as a corrective tool to spearhead a program of reform. Because humanist ideas on language cannot be separated from practice, I will attempt to illustrate a method in order to uncover the underlying assumptions about language which that method implies and its import for historical textual criticism and exegesis in the pages that follow.

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Humanist philology

One of the first systematic applications of humanist philology was Lorenzo Valla's "Declamatio de falso credita et ementita donatione Constantini" (1440), best known simply as the "Donation of Constantine." In this treatise Valla attempted to demonstrate that the "Donation," an official document in which the Roman emperor Constantine supposedly conferred upon Pope Sylvester (314-336) control of the Western Empire, was actually a falsification. The Donation, which Constantine allegedly made out of gratitude to Sylvester for curing him of leprosy, had been considered authentic since it formed part of the respected Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals and suited the political aims of the Papacy very well. For centuries the Church had based its claims of political authority over the Western monarchies on the document's legitimacy. In 1440 Valla was in Spain serving as Secretary to Alfonso of Aragon, who was trying to lay claim to a portion of disputed Italian territory. Valla's "Donation," then, was intended to discredit the document and thus weaken the Church's legal hold on the area. Valla's criticism of the Donation is based on a detailed attack on the forger's use of language. Through a line-by-line reading he was able to demonstrate that word usage in the text was often historically inconsistent and could not be contemporary with Sylvester's papacy. One of the most effective and representative passages is the commentary on the word "satrap," a term applied to officials at Rome in the middle of the eighth century. Valla begins the commentary with a vituperative tirade against the forger before turning to the textual criticism itself: What! How do you want to have satraps in here? Numskull, blockhead! Do the Caesars speak thus? Whoever heard of satraps in the councils of the Romans? I do not remember ever to have read of any Roman satrap being mentioned or even of a satrap in any of the Roman provinces. But this fellow speaks of the Emperor's satrap . . . n Valla's devastating criticism in this passage is based on the simple fact that the use of the term "satrap" was anachronistic in a document which supposedly dated from the fourth century. Its inclusion in the text of the Donation thus identified the document as the product of a much later age, effectively proving that it could not possibly have been an authentic document of Constantine. Valla's philologic exegesis reached maturity with his application of the method to the biblical texts. In the Collatio novi testamenti (1453-7) he turned to the original language manuscripts of the New Testament

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in order to verify the accuracy of the Latin translation. His commentary on certain confusing or corrupt passages of the Vulgate was based on a grammatically and historically precise determination of the literal meaning of certain phrases in the primitive Greek and Hebrew texts. This time, however, Valla's work was greeted with much more intense opposition, for the corrective intent behind this type of criticism challenged both the traditionally accepted language of the Latin Bible and the entire body of interpretation which the medieval Church had erected upon it. In carrying out this task Valla found errors of negligence and ignorance on the part of the copyists, conscious corruptions, simple mistranslations, and stylistic faults which obscured the meaning of the original Greek. He identified, for example, cases of homonym confusion where a scribe taking dictation had mistaken a word for another similar sounding one, inconsistencies resulting from differences in the grammars of Greek and Latin, stylistic abuses which complicated the simplicity of the Greek in order to enliven the Latin prose, etc. All of these he annotated and corrected in order to render the Vulgate translation more faithful to the Greek. In contrast to medieval textual scholarship, Valla's achievements were considerable. He was, in Bentley's words, "able to show by manifold example how scholars might restore the New Testament's text to a more accurate state, recapture its spirit in a more precise translation, and recover its original meaning in a more pertinent exegesis — all this by taking proper account of the philological, linguistic, grammatical, and historical realities that lay in and behind the Greek text of the New Testament." 13 The return to the original languages of the Bible and the authority which philologic exegesis lent those languages was to become the cornerstone of Christian humanist religious reform. Desiderius Erasmus was the first to recognize in Valla's work a weapon to effect a purification of the thought and practice of Occidental Christianity. Like Valla before him, Erasmus cried out for a reform, not of Catholic dogma, but of the way Christ's Word was interpreted and practiced throughout Europe. His criticism was directed at what he perceived as the two main evils: the religious establishment's concern with speculations and interpretations which had little to do with the simplicity of Christ's doctrine, and the degeneration of the religious practices of the common people into fetishism and superstition. Against this state of affairs Erasmus proposed a return to the original sources of Christian-

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ity - to a Philosophia Christi - founded on the study of the Word of Christ as it had been recorded by the Apostles and interpreted by the early Fathers of the Church. A return to the sources of Christianity implied, first of all, a purgation of its texts. Valla had already pointed out that the Latin version of the New Testament was corrupt or incorrect in many places. In order to insure a true understanding of the Word of Christ it had to be restored to its original significance. After centuries of scholastic interpretation based on the four-fold method of interpretation (literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical) the Scriptures must be liberated from all those layers of commentary and the Word restored to the purity of its original meaning. Erasmus proposed a return to the example set by the patristic biblical exegetes, particularly Jerome, whose techniques in translating the scriptures by erudition and command of language, if not always his results, he regarded highly. Jerome was believed to have authored the Vulgate translation because he found that the Septuagint Greek translation and the Latin version which was based on the Greek text differed from the Hebrew original. Since the Apostles' writings were based on the Hebrew texts, he argued, a new Latin translation based on the original language was necessary. Erasmus' discovery of a manuscript of Valla's Collatio in 1504 provided the final impetus to begin his philologic exegesis of the Bible. Valla's commentary, based on a comparison of the Latin and Greek texts of the New Testament, arrived at the following conclusions: the Vulgate often differed from the Greek text due to conscious alterations made in the Latin version in support of Church teachings and other corruptions resulting from the carelessness or ignorance of scribes; moreover, the Greek wording was generally clearer. Recognizing the revolutionary nature of Valla's methodology as well as its exegetical value, Erasmus wrote a bold defense of the Italian's conclusions and, more importantly, of his method. In the preface to his edition of the Collatio, to which he gave the new title Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum and published in 1505, he both responds to Valla's critics and anticipates the attack which his own philological efforts would inevitably invite: What crime is it in Laurentius if after collating some ancient and correct Greek copies he has noted in the New Testament, which is derived from the Greek, some passages which either differ from our version (the Vulgate) or seem to be ineptly rendered owing to a passing want of vigilance in the

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translator, are expressed more significantly in the Greek; or finally if it appears that something in our text is corrupt?14

In 1516 Erasmus published his revolutionary edition of the New Testament. The Greek and corrected Latin Vulgate texts appeared side by side, accompanied by a series of annotations which exemplified and justified the method he had used to arrive at the new readings. Following Valla's grammatico-historical style of exegesis he began by establishing the literal sense of each passage in question. He then proceeded to support and expand this with the commentary of the Church Fathers, occasionally turning to a more recent commentator (usually Valla). And, finally, in the light of this broadened perspective, he returned to the text once again. This counterpoint which Erasmus establishes between his own interpretation, based on a command of the original language, and the authority of previous commentators, was indispensable for protecting his work from its most bitter critics. Since he himself was not a theologian but a grammarian, it was particularly crucial to prove that his changes were in keeping with Church dogma and clean of any heretical stain. However, it is clear that the appeal to the authority of other interpreters is subordinated to the conclusions at which he arrives as the result of his own philologic exegesis. Erasmus' independence in the face of his predecessors is in fact one of the trademarks of his philology which, as Bentley has observed, often functioned by negative contrast to the misguided comments of the patristic exegetes, the medieval commentators, and finally his humanist precursors.15 Even those he most revered and relied upon, the fathers Origen and Jerome and Lorenzo Valla, were on occasion taken to task for deviating from the original Greek texts. Such pillars of the Church as Augustine and Aquinas came under frequent attack by the exegete, showing that while he took pains to stay clearly within the bounds of orthodoxy in his interpretations he was unafraid to challenge Church traditions when philological standards demanded it. Erasmus' vulnerability as a reformer and religious establishment outsider would be mirrored by Garcilaso's position with respect to traditional Spanish historiography on the New World. As we will see in the following chapters, his method was adapted by Garcilaso to challenge faulty interpretations of the indigenous past as well as to shield his bold version of Inca history and culture from attack. The following passage illustrates the revolutionary results the

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philologic method yielded in Erasmus' hands. It is his commentary on the word "Faith" in the note on Romans 1:17: No Latin word corresponds exactly to the Greek (TTLOTIS). In Latin to have faith in someone means to believe what he says. The Greek means this too, but it can also mean "he who does not deceive" (qui non fallit). The Sacred Texts often misuse these words, for they frequently sayfideswhere they mean fiducia, or trust in God, which does not differ much from hope. Sometimes the word "faith" embraces both the assent to matters narrated and promises made, and also trust inspired by God's goodness and the consequent expectation that he will fulfill these promises. This is the faith that men should have in God. But there is also the faith that is said to be of God, which He shows us in his Promises. God is faithful, trustworthy, inoTevei because He does not deceive; man is said to be faithful when he believes, but this usage, though common, goes beyond the strict meaning of the word.16

Erasmus' corrective commentary on the concept of Faith, based on the meaning of the original Greek term, clearly demonstrates how a return to the original languages of the Scriptures could effect changes in the traditional scholastic interpretation of certain concepts central to Catholic belief. In this particular passage he restores the active sense inherent in the Greek term to the exclusively passive meaning of the Latin. Thus, God's perfect faithfulness to mankind becomes the primary motivating factor of the faith we have in Him. The translation effected by Erasmus is nothing less than revolutionary since it renders the concept of Faith as a reciprocal relationship, as it were, between humanity and God, subverting the theocentric view of fidelity represented by the Latin word and the Scholastic doctrine erected upon it. In the hands of Erasmus, then, philology becomes a tool for the translation and restoration of the biblical texts as well as a strategy for religious reform. In spite of the substantial contributions made by Erasmus to the philological method and the restoration of the Greek New Testament his occasional lack of precision as a biblical scholar was severely criticized. He was accused, among other things, of translating from Latin back into Greek the last few verses of Apocalypse, missing from the Greek manuscript he was using. One of his most formidable critics was Diego Lopez de Zufiiga, editor of the Greek New Testament printed for the Complutensian Polyglot Bible in 1514 at Alcala de Henares. The meticulous care given to the restoration of the original language manuscripts at Alcala was a monument to humanist philology and Erasmus' respect for the erudition of the Spanish editor is

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revealed in the fact that he quietly incorporated Lopez de Ziiniga's suggestions into a later edition of his New Testament on the authority of the Complutensian text.17 However, there is a fundamental difference between the corrective work undertaken by Erasmus and the strictly restorative, conservative nature of Complutensian bible scholarship. Erasmus' New Testament and the corrective intent which motivated it represents, above all, a commitment to reform. For the humanist the command of language constitutes both an intellectual resolve to accuracy and correctness and following from that a strategy for change. The philological method was a tool, not only for the restoration of the original language texts of the Bible, but more significantly, for the correction of the Latin Vulgate upon which scholastic interpretation was founded. Erasmus' correction of the Vulgate and the fresh Latin translation which appeared with the Greek in the second and third editions of his New Testament can only be understood as an integral part of his advocacy of a return to the "Philosophy of Christ". In Spain, one of the most prolific centers of philologic activity, this commitment is represented by Antonio de Nebrija and Fray Luis de Leon. Both were determined to carry out the study of the original languages of the Bible but, most importantly, both of them persevered in the interpretation of the Sacred Texts based on a command of Greek and Hebrew. Nebrija and Fray Luis perceived that the philologic method of grammatico-historical exegesis was a means, and corrective translation a strategy, in the struggle to return to the original meaning of the Scriptures. Neither one had the reforming zeal of Erasmus, but both were ultimately more rigorous scholars. Their commitment to the restoration of the original sense of the Bible through a command of the biblical languages places them in the vanguard of humanist linguistic theory and practice. Marcel Bataillon has recognized in Antonio de Nebrija not only the precursor of Spanish Erasmism, but a predecessor of Erasmus himself.18 In 1460, at the age of nineteen, young Nebrija was in Italy studying grammar and the classical authors. During ten years at Bologna and other centers of Italian learning he was profoundly influenced by the critical thought and method which had led Valla to write the Collatio. In 1470 he returned to the Peninsula committed to eradicating "barbarism" from Spanish soil. For Nebrija this meant the teaching of Latin grammar and the model authors of classical antiquity. His first work, the Introductiones Latinae (1481), was a man-

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ual of rhetoric and grammar. The multitude of editions which appeared all over Europe until about 1578 testify to the success and popularity of the book. In 1492 he published three more grammatical works - the "vocabularios" or bilingual dictionaries, one Latin to Spanish and the other Spanish to Latin, and what is perhaps his best known work, the Gramdtica castellana.

Although Nebrija's fame is primarily a result of his research on questions of Spanish grammar, we know by his own admission that soon after the completion of the Introductiones he had already committed himself to the study of the Sacred Texts. He initiated his investigations with a commentary of fifty biblical passages, the Tertia quinquagena (1516). He was, however, severely criticized for his philologic work by Diego de Deza, Bishop of Palencia and Inquisitor General of Spain at the time. The manuscript was confiscated by the authorities and he was forbidden to publish any other investigations of that nature. In response to the attack he appealed to Francisco Ximenez de Cisneros, founder of the University of Alcala and advocate of philologic studies, to serve as his editorial judge. Moreover, he published a valiant defense of his method, dedicated to Cisneros who had fortuitously replaced Deza as Inquisitor General. The Apologia, composed about 1504-6 making it roughly contemporaneous with Erasmus' 1505 edition of Valla's Adnotationes, merits a close examination since it presents both a detailed statement of Nebrija's method and the assumptions about language upon which it is founded. The apology opens with a rhetorical question: Que hacer en una republica donde se premia a los que corrompen las Letras Sagradas, y, al contrario, los que corrigen lo que estaba mal, vuelven a su sitio lo que estaba fuera de el, y enmiendan lo falso y mentiroso, se ven infamados y anatematizados, y aun condenados a una muerte indigna, si tratan de defender su manera de pensar? [What is one to do in a republic where those who corrupt the Sacred Scriptures are rewarded, while, on the contrary, those who correct what was out of place, and emend that which is false and mistaken, find themselves defamed and anathematized, and even condemned to an unworthy death, if they try to defend their way of thinking?]19

Nebrija understood the grammatico-historical correction of the Bible as the philologically precise restoration of the words of the Scriptures to their original meaning. Citing Jerome and Augustine as his authorities, he claims that the philologic method of exegesis is amply justified by their statements that whenever there is an incongruency

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between different versions of the biblical text one should always go to the original source - "siempre que en el Nuevo Testamento haya alguna diversidad entre los libros latinos, recurramos a los griegos; y siempre que en el Antiguo Testamento difieran los codices latinos entre si o con los griegos, recurramos a los hebreos; o sea, que en las dudas siempre hay que recurrir a la lengua precedente." [whenever there may be some diversity in the New Testament among the Latin texts, let us have recourse to those in Greek; and whenever in the Old Testament the Latin codices may differ among themselves or from those in Greek, let us have recourse to those in Hebrew; in other words, when in doubt one must always revert to the preceding language.] The implications could not be any clearer. Nebrija places the Greek and Hebrew texts in a privileged position with regard to the Latin version. The Latin translation in fact completely depends on the authority of the original languages. This is followed by an exhortation on the need to preserve the integrity of the ancient languages: "El hebreo esta entre nosotros enteramente abandonado; y si se hace lo que estos pretenden pronto bajara al panteon del olvido esta lengua tan antigua como venerable, que fue la depositaria de los fundamentos de nuestra religion." [Among us, Hebrew has been completely abandoned, and if what these people intend is done, this language as ancient as it is venerable, and which was the one entrusted with the foundations of our religion, will soon descend to the pantheon of oblivion.] The defense of the study of Hebrew and of Greek is based on the fact that these languages are the original receptacles of the ideas on which the Church was founded, and as such are its most accurate transmitters. Yet Nebrija cannot avoid revealing a reverence for the ancient languages which is apparently independent of the religious justification: 'Torque, si nos quitan los libros hebreos, o nos prohiben manejarlos; si dicen que tampoco hacen falta los griegos, en los cuales se echaron los cimientos de la naciente Iglesia, volveremos a aquel antiguo caos, en que no habian aparecido aun las letras, y faltos de los dos

Testamentos, nos veremos envueltos en las sombras de una noche sempiterna" (my emphasis). [Because, if the Hebrew texts are taken away from us, or if we are forbidden to employ them; if they say that neither do we need the Greek texts, in which were cast the foundations of the nascent Church, we will return to that ancient chaos, in which letters

had not yet appeared, and lacking both Testaments, will find ourselves surrounded by the shadows of everlasting night.] The emphasized

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clause, warning of a return to the chaos which reigned before the appearance of letters, clearly alludes to a concept of language which is predominantly secular - the ability of the great ancient languages to transmit, through their very form, the force of their civilizations. Nebrija's defense is at once a plea for the restoration of the original meaning of the Scriptures and a praise of the ancient tongues themselves as vehicles for the eradication of that linguistic chaos, that barbarian state, which threatens civilization. Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, who was well acquainted with Nebrija's work as will be seen later in this study, bases his defense of Quechua in the Comentarios reales on precisely the same argument. The preservation of the integrity of the languages of antiquity was for the humanists a defense against the barbaric forces of cultural decay. Nebrija's vindication of the grammarian's right - indeed duty - to undertake the emendation of the biblical texts is founded on a belief that only a philologic exegesis can uncover the lost or forgotten significance inherent in the original words: No hay que extranar que cosas que antiguamente eran conocidas de todos, se ignoren ahora por completo. Tal sucede con los nombres de plantas o animales. Que era el onocrotalus? Que era el porphyrio? Que era el Cyprus, el git, y por que se siembra este con el cimino? Lo mismo se diga de los metales, de los artefactos y vestidos, de los lugares y personas. Todo esto conviene saberlo, no solo para satisfacer la curiosidad, sino para entender bien los Libros Sagrados . . . Diran que hay libros en que se explican esas cosas. No, porque los antiguos hablan de ellas como de cosas conocidas, y los modernos como de cosas leidas y no entendidas. Yo, en cambio, hablo de ellas como de cosas vistas y palpadas . . . [We should notfindit strange that things which in ancient times were known by all, should today be completely unknown. It happens thus with the names of plants or animals. What was the onocrotalus? What was the porphyrio? What was Cyprus, and melanthium, and why is the latter planted with cumin? The same may be said of metals, of artefacts and clothing, of places and people. It is advisable to know all this, not only to satisfy one's curiosity but also to understand the Sacred Books well.. . They will say that there are books in which these things are explained. No, because the ancients speak of them as of familiar things, and the modern writers as of things read and not understood. I, on the other hand, speak of them as of things seen and touched . . .] For Nebrija, the philological method places the grammarian in the position of privileged interpreter. The access that the method gives him to the authentic meaning of the text makes his authority equivalent to that of someone who has seen and directly experienced reality.

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The analogy with the historiographic authority of eyewitness testimony ("yo hablo de ellas como de cosas vistas y palpadas") is clearly intentional. A knowledge of the original language gives the grammarian's interpretation of the text an immediacy and a validity which are unattainable by any other means. A command of the language of the original is equivalent to a direct experience of reality. And he adds: Pero diran aun: Sobre el sentido falso o verdadero de esas palabras, han levantado ya los doctores otros sentidos misticos o morales. En lo que hayan hecho otros yo no me meto; alia ellos. Yo solo interpreto lo que ha dicho el autor de la Sagrada Escritura por boca de los Profetas y de los Apostoles, ateniendome a sus palabras. [But still they will say: Upon the true or false sense of those words, the scholars have already raised other mystic or moral senses. In what others may have done I do not interfere; let them answer for themselves. I only interpret what the author of the Holy Scriptures has said through the mouth of the Prophets and Apostles, and I abide by their words.] Nebrija argues in favor of an interpretation based on the words of the Scriptures and limited to them. His refusal to directly attack the scholastic method of interpretation, which placed the authority of Church tradition above that of a strict grammatico-historical exegesis and relied on the elaboration of secondary meanings, is all the more effective because of the comparison it tacitly establishes. The reply is implied by the entire weight of the Apologia's argument. A correct interpretation of the Sacred Texts must concern itself exclusively with the words in their full and true meaning as they appear in the Greek and Hebrew codices. Nebrija closes his defense with a summary and a reaffirmation of his method and its purpose: to restore the Latin Vulgate translation believed to be the work of St. Jerome to its pristine state. Alluding to the confiscated manuscript of the first Tertia quinquagena he defiantly states: Esto lo hemos hecho ya en parte nosotros mismos, y en parte lo haremos, comparando los codices modernos latinos con los de la venerable antiguedad, en los cuales facilmente se ve lo que escribio San Jeronimo, y si esta conforme o no con los codices griegos o hebreos. Diganme, por su vida, los que me censuran, que linaje de herejia es este. [In part we have done this already ourselves, and in part we will do it, comparing the modern Latin codices with those of venerable antiquity, in which it is easily seen what St. Jerome wrote, and whether it is in accordance or not with the Greek or Hebrew codices. Let those who censure me tell me, on their life, what kind of heresy this is.]

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The Inquisition's tolerance of Nebrija's defiance can be explained in part by the friendship and protection Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros offered him, but most significant is simply the matter of time. The Apologia was published in 1505, the same year in which Erasmus began his philologic endeavors by publishing Valla's Adnotationes. It preceded the great controversy over the interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures brought to a head by Erasmus' translation of the Greek New Testament which openly challenged the authority of the Vulgate. It also antedated Martin Luther's cataclysmic rebellion. Fray Luis de Leon would not be so fortunate. By the middle of the sixteenth century the threat which humanist philology presented was clearly perceived by the Church, and severely punished. At Trent, the prohibition against any translation of the Bible was reinforced and the Vulgate declared the only true and authorized edition of the biblical text. The Vulgate was not only sanctified by centuries of use in the Church, but was now decreed to be absolutely free from error by the Council of Trent.20 Fray Luis de Leon's method of exegesis, essentially philological in nature, and his insistence on the primacy of the original language texts of the Scriptures, was to cost him five years of his life in the jails of the Inquisition. During those years two of his colleagues would die in prison for the same offense. The threat presented by humanist philology on the Iberian peninsula was particularly acute due to the recent conversion to Christianity of a large Jewish population. Thus, Fray Luis' translation of the Song ofSongs, directly from the original Hebrew, was to have repercussions in Spain which perhaps it might not have had elsewhere. A study of his biblical work and of the inquisitorial process against him will shed some light both on the state of philology at the time of the Counter-Reformation and its importance as a linguistic strategy of religious reform in the eyes of the Church authorities.21 In the prologue to his translation of the Song of Songs (1561) Fray Luis presents his method of rendering the Hebrew text into Spanish to the reader. The first step is to set the Cantar de los Cantares in a context which is familiar to his European audience. Hence, the love affair between Solomon and Pharaoh's daughter is cast in the pastoral mode and the main characters transformed into "pastor" and "pastora." This initial act of what Roman Jakobson calls intersemiotic translation renders the Cantar3s sexually explicit language immediately acceptable and comprehensible by setting it within an established

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22

Western literary code. The explicit sexual language of the Cantar is recast in the plaintive mode of the pastoral, in which the expression of human love is always colored by protestations of spiritual suffering. The importance of this intersemiosis to Fray Luis' translation cannot be underestimated since it paves the way for the traditional allegorical interpretation, whereby the figures of Solomon and his wife are substituted by Christ and his Church; but more significantly, it allows Fray Luis to undertake a literal translation of the original Hebrew by, in effect, neutralizing the carnal aspects of human love of which the text speaks all too plainly.23 The allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament preferred by traditional Catholic exegetes is clearly of secondary interest, however, once the language of the Cantar has been purified by the initial intersemiosis. Fray Luis immediately proceeds to declare his intention of undertaking a word-for-word translation of the text. Upon excusing himself for avoiding a spiritual interpretation, since it has already been done by more qualified persons, he states: Solamente trabaje en declarar la corteza de la letra asi llanamente, como si en este libro no hubiera otro mayor secreto del que muestran aquellas palabras desnudas y, al parecer, dichas y respondidas entre Salomon y su Esposa, que sera solamente declarar el sonido de ellas, y aquello en que esta la fuerza de la comparacion y del requiebro; que aunque es trabajo de menos quilates que el primero [the allegorical interpretation], no por eso carece de grandes dificultades, como luego veremos.24 [I have worked only at explaining the crust of the words in a plain manner, as if in this book there were no other secret greater than the one revealed by those naked words, apparently spoken and responded between Solomon and his wife, which will be only to determine their literal meaning and wherein lies the force of their comparisons and compliments; for although it is a labor less worthy than the other, not for this does it lack great difficulties, as we shall see later.]

Fray Luis asserts that his translation is above all a literal one. He has rendered the "corteza de la letra," plainly, without delving into any greater mysteries than those expressed by the "naked" words. The difficulties posed by the vast linguistic and cultural differences of two such divergent sign systems as Spanish and Hebrew are also recognized, however. Fray Luis attempts to bridge the remaining gaps between the two texts by resorting to a twofold method of translation and philological commentary which enables him to translate word for word, and to explain the full and often multiple significance of the

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original Hebrew, as well as the spectrum of connotations and semantic bridges which allow for the metaphorical relationships established by the text. The meticulous nature of the translation stems first of all from the belief that God's love manifests itself through the words of the Holy Scriptures as well as through His actions throughout history. The importance attributed to language as a vehicle for communication with God is a major motivating force behind Christian humanist philologic practice. Fray Luis expresses this belief in the opening paragraphs of the prologue to the Cantar, thus justifying the method he has chosen and his fidelity to the original Hebrew text: procure conformarme cuanto pude con el original hebreo, cotejando juntamente todas las traducciones griegas y latinas que de el hay, que son muchas, y pretend! que respondiese esta interpretacion con el original, no solo en las sentencias y palabras sino aun en el concierto y aire de ellas, imitando sus figuras y maneras de hablar cuanto es posible a nuestra lengua, que, a la verdad, responde con la hebrea en muchas cosas. (p. 29) [I tried to conform as much as I could to the original Hebrew, comparing all the Greek and Latin translations of it that there are, which are many, and I tried to make this interpretation correspond to the original, not only in the ideas and words expressed but even in the arrangement and air of them, imitating its figures and manners of speech as much as is possible in our language, which, verily, corresponds to the Hebrew in many ways.]

A command of the original language is essential to Fray Luis' method. Humanist philosophy of language places the original word in a privileged position because it is the most adequate vehicle for the transmission of meaning, but also because of a belief that the rhythms, sounds, and shapes of the words are part of the essence of signification. Thus, for Valla the recovery of the texts of antiquity constituted, in and of itself, the revival of an order which had been lost with the decay of those civilizations; thus a misuse of language or a mistranslation constitutes an assault against that order. For Erasmus a return to the sources of Christian thought must be accompanied by a purgation of the language of its texts. For Fray Luis as well translation demands total fidelity to the original, insofar as the characteristics of the secondary language will permit. The translation must conform to the original both in content and in form. The commentary becomes an integral part of that process since it fills the gaps where the lack of a complete equivalence between the sign systems of Hebrew and Spanish creates ambiguities in the text. Such an attitude toward language and translation imposes strict

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responsibilities on the translator. Fray Luis does not hesitate to make these clear: El que traslada ha de ser fiel y cabal y, si fuere posible, contar las palabras para dar otras tantas, y no mas ni menos, de la misma cualidad y condition y variedad de significaciones que las originales tienen, sin limitarlas a su propio sentido y parecer, para que los que leyeren la traduccion puedan entender toda la variedad de sentidos a que da ocasion el original . . . (p. 29) [He who translates must be faithful and accurate and, if possible, must count the words in order to give as many others, and not more nor less, of the same quality and condition and variety of meanings as the original ones have, without limiting them to his own sense and opinion, so that those who may read the translation will be able to understand all the variety of meanings to which the original gives rise . . .]

The strict fidelity of the philologic translator is underlined through direct contrast with the methods of an allegorical or spiritual interpretation: El extenderse diciendo, y el declarar copiosamente la razon que se entiende, y el guardar la sentencia que mas agrade, jugar con las palabras anadiendo y quitando a nuestra voluntad, eso quedese para el que declara, cuyo propio oficio es; y nosotros usamos de el despues de puesto cada un capitulo en la declaration que sigue. (p. 30) [To enlarge upon an interpretation, and copiously explain the meaning as one understands it, and to keep the idea that most pleases one, and to play with the words by adding or taking away from them at will, is better left to him who explains, whose proper occupation it is; and we, after having set down each chapter, make use of it in the explanation that follows.]

This type of interpretation is nothing more than a copious elaboration of secondary meanings, implies Fray Luis, in contrast to the succinct and precise nature of the philological method of exegesis, which uncovers the true significance of the original words. It is also selective in the meanings it presents, according to the personal preferences of the interpreter. Moreover, it is largely capricious since the interpreter may play with the language and distort its original meaning by adding and subtracting words at will. Considering the fairly contemptuous tone of his description, it is surprising to find that Fray Luis admits to including this type of spiritual interpretation in his translation. It is in fact an integral part of his commentary which is divided into three parts or "pasos," the first of which is usually a philologic gloss of ambiguous or difficult passages. This is followed by a literal narration, or explanation, of the

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action. Finally, the spiritual meaning is elaborated, but the allegorical interpretation is always subordinated to the philologic exegesis which precedes it. Fray Luis is extremely careful to render the interpretation homogenous with the meaning of the original text. Indeed, humanist philological practice, from Valla to Fray Luis, did not intend to do away with the allegorical interpretation so favored by scholastic exegetes. It simply demanded that such practices be faithful to the original language of the text. Humanist philology maintained, as a basic premise, that a historically and linguistically accurate understanding of the original language must take precedence over other methods of interpretation. A closer look at the actual commentary on the Cantar will help elucidate the theoretical pronouncements set forth in the prologue. It becomes evident from Fray Luis' repeated statements that the two most significant problems he encountered in his translation were i) the polysemantic nature of the Hebrew lexicon and 2) the lack of Spanish equivalents for certain words and expressions. Thus, his commentary frequently consists of definitions, circumlocutions, and glosses which serve to elaborate the precise and complete meaning of the original: "Yo rosa del campo: la palabra hebrea es habatzeleth, que segiin los mas doctos en aquella lengua, no es cualquiera rosa, sino una cierta especie de ellas en la color negra, pero muy hermosa y de gentil olor" (pp. 98-99) [I, rose of the field: the Hebrew word is habatzeleth, which, according to those most knowledgeable about that language, is not just any rose, but rather a certain species of them, black in color, but very beautiful and with an exquisite scent]. The semantic accuracy demonstrated in establishing the precise meaning of habatzeleth, for which there is no Spanish or, apparently, Latin equivalent, is essential to conveying the full significance of the biblical metaphor which represents the specifically dark-skinned beauty of the woman in the original Hebrew text. A rigorous philologic exegesis is also applied to cases where the Hebrew word has a plurality of senses: Pero hay gran diferencia de pareceres en lo que dice, puesta en el cerro collado, porque la palabra hebrea talpioth se declara diversamente por diversos. Unos dicen que es collado o lugar alto; otros cosa que ensefia el camino a los que pasan; y otros dicen ser lo mismo que cerca o edificio fuerte y alto, o barbacana, y todo aquello con que se fortalece alguna casa o edificio fuerte . . . Lo que a mi me parece mas acertado en este lugar, para abrazar todas esas diferencias ya dichas, es trasladar asi: Tu cuello es como la torre de David puesta en atalaya; que es decir casa puesta en lugar alto y fuerte, y que sirve de descubrir los enemigos, si vienen, y mostrar el camino a los que pasan; y

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por el oficio de que sirve y por el sitio que tiene, de necesidad ha de ser casa fuerte. (p. 132) [But there are great differences of opinion as to what "placed upon the ridge or hill" means, because the Hebrew word talpioth is explained differently by different people. Some say it is a ridge or high place; others, something that points out the way to those who pass by; still others say it is the same as a wall or a strong and tall building, or a tower, and anything that fortifies some house or strong building. What seems most correct to me at this point, in order to embrace all the differences mentioned above, is to translate thus: "Your neck is like the tower of David placed like a watch-tower"; which is to say like a house placed upon a strong and high place, and which serves to discover enemies if they come, and to show the way to those who pass by; and because of the purpose it serves and the position it has, must of necessity be a strong house.] Fray Luis' meticulous philological analysis of the original text leads him to the full meaning of the Hebrew word, and to a reconciliation of its semantic diversity, thus allowing for a comprehensible and accurate rendering in Spanish. The commentary becomes, in Fray Luis' hands, a viable solution to one of the fundamental problems of translation, the lack of complete equivalency between linguistic systems. It is an integral and indispensable subtext of the CantarP Such rigorous philologic exegesis could not help but lead to the observation of mistakes and inaccuracies in previous translations. In fact Fray Luis did challenge the clarity and precision of certain passages of the Vulgate and Septuagint translations. Just as each of his predecessors, Valla, Nebrija, and Erasmus, had proposed corrections to obscure or corrupt sections of the Vulgate text, Fray Luis suggested that a better rendering of certain passages was possible, and that the errors resulting from the work of careless scribes should be corrected. His corrections of the Vulgate and Septuagint and the method which he utilized further offended Catholic authorities when the translation began to be disseminated publicly. Although the Spanish version of the Song of Songs was intended for the private use of his cousin, the nun Isabel Osorio, the text was apparently stolen from Fray Luis' cell and copies circulated as far as Peru. This openly defied a prohibition against biblical translations into the vulgar languages first issued by the Council of Tarragona and later reaffirmed in Pope Paul IV's Index of 1559. A similar yet more severely worded ban was decreed by the Council of Trent in 1564. The text of the Cantar contained several emendations to the Septuagint and the Vulgate; the latter had, after all, been declared free from error at Trent and was now the official version of the Catholic Church.

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The Inquisition's case against Fray Luis de Leon was built essentially on these two offenses and was strengthened by the fact that the accused was a New Christian. Thus, Fray Luis' questioning of the correctness of the Vulgate translation, particularly since he rested his argument on the authority of the original Hebrew for his claims, was immediately suspected as a source of heresy and hebraism. Indeed, the first five charges that were brought against him, as well as the eighth, presented Fray Luis as "descendiente de generation de judios."26 In 1572 the Holy Office arrested Fray Luis de Leon and instituted formal action against him. The collection of documents of the proceedings contains an elaborate genealogic study of Fray Luis' family along with a detailed account of the accusations and cases against some of his relatives who had been tried for practicing the Hebrew faith.27 Also implicated in the proceedings were two other eminent hebraists at the University of Salamanca — Martinez and Grajal — both of whom were also accused of preferring the original Hebrew text of the Bible over that of the Latin Vulgate in their commentaries and exegesis. A careful reading of the documents, however, reveals that Fray Luis' orthodoxy on questions of faith was only marginally challenged. The Inquisition's overriding concern was with his philologic method of biblical exegesis and the conclusions to which that had led him with regard to the Vulgate and Septuagint translations. This becomes clearly evident if one compares the official list of accusations presented against him by the tribunal of the Inquisition and the initial declarations and denunciations made by his personal enemies Bartolome de Medina and Leon de Castro. Medina and Castro were obsessed with revealing Fray Luis' Jewish ancestry, undoubtedly in the hope that this would render the accused more vulnerable in the eyes of the authorities. But the evaluations of his writings on biblical interpretation presented as testimony by prominent theologians selected by the Inquisition points clearly to more serious concerns. Although the length and wordiness of these documents makes citation awkward the following passage from the evaluation of Fray Mancius Hernandez is clear and concise, as well as representative of other charges against him. Referring to Fray Luis' statements that certain passages in the Vulgate could be "better and more clearly" rendered, he writes: Y asi es una determination, a lo que parece, libre y atrevida demasiadamente, aunque no hay en ella proposition que notoriamente sea heretica; pero tiene comunicacion en el lenguaje y en el intento que parece pretender quitar la autoridad a la Vulgata, que es lo que los herejes pretenden, y darla a

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los libros griegos y hebreos, siendo cosa averigiiada estar en muchas partes corruptos, y que es peligroso querer por ellos emendar los latinos, por tantos centenarios de afios usados en la iglesia, y ultimamente tan autorizados por el Sancto Concilio.28 [And thus it is a determination, so it seems, which is too daring and free, although there is not in it any proposition that may be notoriously heretical; but there is a communication in its language and intent which seems to endeavor to take authority away from the Vulgate, which is what the heretics endeavor, and to give it to the Greek and Hebrew texts, being as it is a proven thing that they are corrupt in many places, and that it is dangerous to want to emend the Latin texts because of them, which have been used for so many years in the Church, and lately much authorized by the Holy Council.] At issue here is the authority of the Vulgate, on which the traditional language of the Church and dogma are based, in the face of a challenge presented by a method of exegesis which goes beyond the Vulgate by giving ultimate authority to the original language texts of the Scriptures. Fray Luis clearly understood this to be the case and he devotes by far the greater part of his defense to addressing these charges. He insists repeatedly that he never challenged the infallibility of the Vulgate on questions of dogma and faith; on the contrary, he has always defended it in his writings. He affirms, however, that he has in the past suggested the possibility of making the Latin translation clearer and more precise in certain places. In regard to the very sensitive issue of making a totally new translation, Fray Luis is very careful to assure his judges that not only had it never been his intention to undertake such an ambitious project, but that he is firmly opposed to any new translation that does not have the approval of the Pope and the Church. It must be remembered that humanist philology had indeed produced corrective translations which were intended to replace the Vulgate. Erasmus translated the New Testament from the Greek and Luther followed suit with a translation of the Bible into the vernacular (1522—34) which outraged the Church. Fray Luis' own translation directly from the Hebrew into Spanish, although it had been intended for private use only, had circulated throughout the Iberian peninsula and beyond, even so far as the American colonies. This transgression of three major edicts prohibiting the translation of the Scriptures, especially into the vernacular, was particularly offensive to the Church during this period of reaction to the damaging effects of humanist religious reform. In 1576, after almost five years of incarceration, Fray Luis de Leon was finally acquitted of the charge of heresy. He was, however,

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officially reprimanded for having questioned the authority of the Vulgate "in such dangerous times." It had been sixty years since Erasmus had adopted Valla's philological method with the intention of effecting a reform of the language and practices of the medieval Church. The strategy had been successful, but in the interim Christianity was splintered into numerous factions and sects. Sobered by his experience in the cells of the Inquisition, Fray Luis would renounce the correction of the biblical text based on new translations from the original languages. In the closing lines of a letter which addressed the matter of a commission appointed by Pope Sixtus V to undertake the correction of the Vulgate (c. 1588), his disillusionment with the task is evident: Pensar que con la Vulgata ni con otras cien traslaciones que se hiciesen, aunque mas sean al pie de letra, se pondra la fuerza que el hebreo tiene en muchos lugares, ni se sacara a luz la prenez de sentidos que en ellos hay, es grande engafio, como lo saben los que tienen alguna noticia, de aquella lengua, y los que han leido en ella los Libros Sagrados. (p. 1395) [To think that with the Vulgate, or with another hundred translations that might be done, no matter how literal they may be, one will produce the force of expression that is in the Hebrew in many passages, nor bring to light the fullness of meaning that is in those passages, is a great delusion, as all those who have some knowledge of that language and have read the Sacred Books in it know.]

But what is most striking about this passage is the fact that Fray Luis' disillusionment concerns only the efficacy of translation as a form of correction. His more important belief in the primacy of the original language as the only adequate vehicle for understanding the full significance of the Sacred Texts remains defiantly intact.29 At the end of the sixteenth century the authority of the original language text was still respected and philology continued to be the privileged method of textual interpretation among humanists. In 1560, as Fray Luis de Leon was putting the finishing touches to his translation and philologic commentary of the Song of Songs, Garcilaso Inca de la Vega was embarking on an arduous trip down the Andean sierra from Cuzco to Lima where he would await a galleon to make the ocean passage to Spain. The conquistador Sebastian Garcilaso de la Vega had left his illegitimate mestizo son a modest inheritance to enable him to travel to Europe in order to complete his education. Perhaps the ship which brought Fray Luis' illicit translation to Peru was the same one which took the young Garcilaso to the Iberian peninsula. Although we can only speculate about how close

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he might have come to such a masterpiece of the humanist philologic tradition during his voyage, there is no doubt that when Garcilaso arrived in Europe a few months later he entered a culture permeated with humanist linguistic activity. Within ten years of his arrival, Fray Luis would be persecuted by the Inquisition for his translations and for his use of the philological method to question the accuracy of the Vulgate. Shortly thereafter Martinez and Grajal, both Hebrew scholars and philologists at Salamanca, would die in the cells of the Inquisition for similar crimes. This was the background against which Garcilaso was to develop the ideas on language that would lead him to the translation of Leon Hebreo's Dialoghi d'amore and later to his revolutionary commentaries on the history and culture of the Incas. In the remaining chapters of this study I will attempt to elucidate Garcilaso's discursive strategies and narrative techniques and ultimately his objectives and intentions in the reinterpretation of Inca history and culture by situating his text in the practical traditions of the humanist linguistic and textual arts. In emphasizing discursive performance in the Comentarios reales in relation to the methods and activities of the group of scholars and intellectuals with whom Garcilaso chose to identify his work, I hope that the role of the humanist language arts in the text will be seen as a central, indeed essential creative component in the representation of Inca civilization. It is evident even from a cursory reading of the Comentarios reales that language plays a central part in the text. The introductory chapter devoted to the explanation of grammatical and semantic peculiarities of the language of the Incas, the extensive use of Quechua terminology, the philologic exegesis and translation of Quechua terms in order to achieve an accurate interpretation, the affirmation of the indispensability of a command of the original language in order to represent Inca history truthfully, all point to the essential role that humanist linguistic notions play in the work. Clearly, the concern with language dominates the narration of the historical material. It is first of all simply a means of communicating information, but language is also the object of a discourse which is selfconscious and critical. Garcilaso is the first narrator of Amerindian history and culture to be fully aware of the problematic relation between European discourse and the representation of indigenous realities. Friar Ramon Pane, the author of the first account of the native Caribbean cultures, bemoaned in the most naive terms his

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inability to capture in Spanish the internal logic of Arawak mythological narratives, apologizing to his readers for the often chaotic results.30 Bias Valera, the mestizo priest whose unpublished work Garcilaso frequently cites, included translations of Quechua terminology in his Latin narrative. 31 But no work before the Comentarios reales addressed the problem of representing the Amerindian past in a European tongue so systematically and so profoundly. Garcilaso's narration of history is mediated by philological exegesis, translation, and hermeneutics. His role as narrator of the indigenous past is that of a practitioner of language who explicitly manipulates the linguistic arts of his times in order to optimize the communicative efficacy of his discourse.

3 Language and history in the Comentarios reales

Viktor Frankl has shown that historiography is characterized by changes in the concept of historical truth and its representation. 1 Thus, during the chivalrous Middle Ages historical discourse was shaped by the desire to record and preserve the fame of great men and heroic deeds. Historical truth consisted in the representation of the exemplary. Renaissance historiography, inspired by the master historians of the classical age Herodotus and Pliny, Thucydides and Polybius, incorporated the testimony of the eyewitness into its representation of historical reality. This concept of historical truth acquired particular poignancy with the discovery of the New World and the subsequent encounter of European historical consciousness with a referent never before recorded. The ensuing conflict between the accounts of those who traveled to America and the speculations of the revered authors of antiquity brought the authority of the eyewitness into a particularly privileged historiographic position. Father Jose de Acosta's refutation of Lactantius' theory on the existence of antipodes is representative of the decline in the authority of the ancients in favor of a historiography based on actual experience.2 In short, the very novelty of each encounter with American realities rendered other types of historiographic accreditation increasingly irrelevant. It should not be surprising, therefore, to find that New World historiography relied increasingly on the authority of the eyewitness during the decades that followed the discovery and conquest. In contrast to Herodotus, for example, who made particularly vivid use of the eyewitness in his history of the ancient world, as happy to draw on his own experiences, as on hearsay, common opinion and personal inquiry,3 many narrators of early American history scrupulously distinguished personal testimony from other sources. Moreover, they dressed their reports in elaborate rhetorical language which attested to their personal dignity, integrity, acumen, and thorough familiarity 39

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with the events in question. One can, in fact, divide colonial Latin American historical narrative into two general types: the bookish histories written from a distance and lacking direct contact with the material, and those which challenged them based on the authority of eyewitness testimony, either as an attribute of the actual narrator of the account or of the privileged source on whose prerogative the validity of the history rests. Thus Fernandez de Oviedo, in his Historia naturaly general de las Indias, islas.y tierrafirme del Mar Oceano (1535-7),

accuses Pedro Martir de Angleria (Decades de orbe novo, 1530) of falsely representing events by relying on vicarious bookish knowledge and a highly artificial rhetorical style. In clarification of his own methods, he affirms the absolute authority of the eyewitness: pues no escribo de autoridad de algun historiador o poeta, sino como testigo de vista en la mayor parte de cuanto aqui tratare. Y lo que no hobiere visto direlo por relacion de personas fidedignas no dando en cosa alguna credito a un solo testigo, sino a muchos en aquellas cosas que mi persona no hobiere experimentado. [For I do not depend on the authority of some poet or historian when I write, but upon myself as an eyewitness of most of the things I shall speak of here; and what I have not seen myself I shall relate from the accounts of trustworthy persons, never depending upon the evidence of a single witness, but upon that of many, in those things I have not experienced in my own person.]4

But certainly the most effective challenge was voiced by those who participated in the voyages of discovery and the wars of conquest. Their testimony constitutes a corrective historiography, a veritable rewriting of the history of Europe's first encounters with the New World. The accounts of Las Casas, Cieza de Leon, Bias Valera, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Cabeza de Vaca, et al., rely on their own authority as participants in the events to question the accuracy of versions based on information obtained from books or hearsay, on knowledge divorced from practical experience. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria has noted that the structure of the first person narrative of the period closely resembles that of the relacion, a legal document whose primary purpose was to give testimony to the Crown regarding one's experiences in military or exploratory expeditions.5 The famous "cartas de relacion" in which Hernan Cortes testified to Charles V regarding the conquest of Mexico were precisely this type of document. The assimilation of a judicial discursive format by colonial historiography, suggests Gonzalez Echevarria, reveals the need to guarantee further its own veracity. As a discourse without antecedents, often written by commoners who held no titles or credentials, the credibility of early

LANGUAGE AND HISTORY IN THE COMENTARIOS REALES

41

American historiography was extremely vulnerable and the authority of its narrator constantly in question.6 This subtle shift from the predominance of the eyewitness to the "Iwitness" narrative voice is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Bernal Diaz's Historia verdadera de la conquista de la JVueva Espana (1568).

The Historia verdadera is in form as well as intent the testimony of a retired soldier who comes out of anonymity in his old age to testify against the rhetorical virtuosity of erudite historians like Lopez de Gomara in an attempt to vindicate the contributions of the common soldier in Cortes' expedition. In Bernal's narrative the proliferation of the first person pronoun — "y digo otra vez que yo y yo y yo, digolo tantas veces, que soy el mas antiguo . . ." — dramatizes the challenge which the title itself implies.7 Bernal places his narrative authority in direct opposition to Lopez de Gomara's, in an attempt to undermine the credibility of the latter's account. Garcilaso Inca de la Vega's attempts at corrective history are among the most radical examples of the revisionist historiography that was characteristic of this period. For if Garcilaso did not write with Las Casas' hyperbolic vehemence or with Bernal's indignant directness, his goals were ultimately more subversive. In La Florida del Inca, a history of the de Soto expedition, the figure of the Indian is drawn in epic proportions, while Garcilaso's potentially controversial representation is buttressed by an intricate system of accreditation allegedly based on three eyewitness accounts. La Florida derives its historiographic authority first of all from the oral testimony on which it claims to be based — an account dictated to the narrator by an anonymous friend who participated in de Soto's incursions into southeastern North America. Garcilaso repeatedly protests complete fidelity to his source, to whom he refers simply as "mi autor." He describes his own role in the writing of the history as that of "scribe." Into this account Garcilaso also weaves an intricate system of verification which is intended to corroborate and reinforce the testimony of the primary witness. The probatory references consist primarily of eyewitness accounts which substantiate the claims of his informant, particularly with regard to the representation of the Indians. These include two unpublished accounts by veterans of the expedition, Juan Coles and Alonso de Carmona, as well as references to established sources like Father Jose de Acosta's Historia and Cabeza de Vaca's account of the ordeals of the first Floridean expedition.8 That Garcilaso should go to such pains to render his narrative

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credible is not surprising, given the fact that La Florida represents a bold attempt to integrate the figure of the Indian and the Hispanic concept of the caballero, the paradigm of masculine excellence in the sixteenth century. Garcilaso had attempted to model his own life according to this ideal which combined nobility of spirit and military prowess with the cultivation of letters and the art of verbal eloquence. In his youth he had served as a captain in the Alpujarras wars (1567-8) and in his later years dedicated his life to literary activities. The prototype of the Renaissance caballero is perhaps best represented by the Marques de Santillana. Member of the military aristocracy and avid reader, collector, and imitator of the classics, Santillana was a poet in his own right, composing excellent imitations of the odes of Horace in the vernacular.9 The Indian warrior heroes of Garcilaso's narrative, although they are deprived of letters, are nonetheless eloquent masters of verbal expression in the classical tradition. Garcilaso's historiographical intentions are made clear in the opening lines of the prologue: Conversando mucho tiempo y en diversos lugares, con un caballero, grande amigo mio, que se hallo en esta Jornada, y oyendole muchas y muy grandes hazafias que en ella hicieron asi espanoles como indios, me parecio cosa indigna y de mucha lastima que obras tan heroicas que en el mundo han pasado quedasen en perpetuo olvido. Por lo cual, viendome obligado de ambas naciones, porque soy hijo de un espafiol y de una india, importune muchas veces a aquel caballero escribiesemos esta historia, sirviendole yo de escribiente. [Conversing over a long period of time and in different places with a great and noble friend of mine who accompanied this expedition of Florida, and hearing him recount the numerous very illustrious deeds that both Spaniards and Indians performed in the process of conquest, I became convinced that when such heroic actions as these had been performed in this world, it was unworthy and regrettable that they should remain in perpetual oblivion. Feeling myself therefore under the obligation to two races, since I am the son of a Spanish father and an Indian mother, I many times urged the cavalier to record the details of the expedition, using me as his amanuensis.]10 The equal status given to both Spaniards and Indians in the very opening lines is developed throughout La Florida in the representation of the characters, their actions, and their words. What results is the transformation of the figure of the native as ignorant savage, common in earlier accounts, into that of wise leader, eloquent orator, and gallant warrior, an equal to the best Europe had to offer.11 This vision of the Indian as caballero will carry over into his representation of the Inca leaders in the Comentarios reales, as will be seen later. It should be noted that this passage is, in the final analysis, an

LANGUAGE AND HISTORY IN THE COMENTARIOS REALES 43

expression of loyalty on the part of the narrator which, he makes clear, is evenly divided between his father's people, the Spaniards, and his mother's race, the natives of the New World, represented here by the Indians of Florida. This loyalty is expressed as a historiographical commitment to give equal status to Spaniard and Indian protagonists. Yet this expressed equality in effect serves to highlight Indian achievements since the historical norm being violated pertains to the representation of Indian, not Spanish, behavior. The figure of the mestizo narrator is essential to the justification of the egalitarian treatment given to the deeds of both conquistadores and Indians, but the effect is likewise an underscoring of his indigenous loyalties. One can only be skeptical about Garcilaso's insistence on affirming that h;s role in the writing process was limited to that of scribe. Even a cursory reading of La Florida betrays Garcilaso's authorial interventions throughout the narrative. And when one takes into consideration that his anonymous source, identified by modern scholars as the conquistador Gonzalo Silvestre, had died some fifteen years before La Florida was published in 1605, it is doubly difficult to believe his claim of having played such a neutral role in its composition.12 Garcilaso's affirmation can perhaps best be explained in terms of its rhetorical function, as a response to his perception of the fragility of his own narrative authority. Garcilaso's acute awareness of the vulnerability of his position is evidenced in the connection he makes between the fastidiousness of his eyewitness source and the truth of his own representation: y en lo que toca al particular a nuestros indios y a la verdad de nuestra historia, como dije al principio, yo escribo de relacion ajena, de quien lo vio y manejg personalmente. El cual quiso ser tan fiel en su relacion que, capitulo por capitulo, como se iba escribiendo, los iba corrigiendo, quitando o afiadiendo lo que faltaba o sobraba de lo que el habia dicho, que ni una palabra ajena por otra de las suyas nunca las consintio, de manera que yo no puse mas de la pluma, como escribiente. (p. 314) [But in regard to what concerns our particular Indians and the truth of my history, as I said in the beginning, I have simply recorded the words of another who witnessed and supervised the writing personally. This man was so anxious to be accurate that he corrected each chapter as it was written, adding what was lacking and deleting what he himself had not said, for he would not consent to any word other than his own. I, therefore, as the author contributed no more than the pen.] (Varner, p. 158)

Garcilaso's challenge to traditional historiography culminates in Comentarios reales de los incas (1609). For it is precisely in the history of his mother's people that he openly confronts the Spanish

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historiographic establishment, offering his own work as a corrective reinterpretation. Historical truth in the Comentarios reales, however, is not defined in terms of the testimonial authority of the eyewitness, as it is in La Florida. It is instead conceived within a linguistic framework, and executed throughout the text as a vast enterprise of exegesis and interpretation. The object of Garcilaso's exposition in the Comentarios reales is Inca history and culture, not as an unprocessed historical record but as discursive structure, for he realizes that Inca history was already in textual form, as an oral narrative stored in the collective memories of his Inca elders. Therefore, he is careful to present his own knowledge of the Inca past as one which was acquired in the form of a story told to him by his great-uncle at one of the frequent family gatherings: . . . Siendo ya yo de diez y seis o diez y siete afios, acaescio que, estando mis parientes un dia en esta su conversacion hablando de sus Reyes y antiguallas, al mas anciano dellos, que era el que dava cuenta dellas, le dixe: — Inca, tio, pues no hay escritura entre vosotros, que es la que guarda la memoria de las cosas pasadas ^que noticias teneis del origen y principio de nuestros Reyes? Porque alia los espanoles y las otras naciones, sus comarcanas, como tienen historias divinas y humanas, saben por ellas cuando empecaron a reinar sus Reyes y los ajenos y el trocarse unos imperios en otros, hasta saber cuantos mil afios ha que Dios crio el cielo y la tierra, que todo esto y mucho mas saben por sus libros. Empero vosotros, que careceis dellos dque memoria teneis de vuestras antiguallas, ^quien fue el primero de nuestros Incas?, ^como se llamo?, ^que origen tuvo su linaje?,