The eighteenth century, especially the latter half, has often been called the least Spanish era in the history of Spain. It was a period of change, of national self-examination, of self-criticism, and even of self-condemnation. Striving for needed improvement in numerous phases of national life—intellectual, religious, political, social, medical, and economic, among others—Spanish leaders looked abroad and into their own heritage for guidance and inspiration. Hence their extraordinary attention to French, English, German, Italian, and other foreign writers; but they also showed a renewed interest in their own outstanding statesmen, thinkers, and authors, especially those of the Golden Age.
Their study of conditions in Spain revealed great inequality of wealth. Education was still the privilege of a very few. Superstition had in great part replaced morality and firm religious convictions. Many high churchmen were selfish politicians rather than solicitous spiritual pastors; the lower clergy and many religious were often too poorly educated to assist the ordinary people in their struggle for religious and cultural improvement. So self-critical were many eighteenth-century intellectual leaders that it would be easy to charge them with being anti-Hispanic. But if they found fault with the mother country, they were even more critical of conditions in the overseas dominions, an aspect not considered by Mestre.
The present volume is a detailed study of efforts by one outstanding leader to examine the ills of his country and to suggest effective remedies. As the title indicates, the author limits his investigation to the political and religious thought of Gregorio Mayáns y Sisear and gives only the merest outline of biographical data. A good biography of Mayáns still remains to be written; also other aspects of his activity not dealt with here are much in need of study.
Gregorio, born in Oliva (Valencia), studied law at the precocious age of fourteen under the direction of his maternal grandfather. Six years later when he continued at the University of Salamanca, he had already thought and written much about the intellectual and religious decadence of his native land. He returned to Valencia in 1722 for his doctorate at the university and shortly afterwards began a brief period of teaching there. Appointment in 1733 as director of the Royal Library enabled him to find the lost manuscripts of the eminent bibliographer Nicolás Antonio.
In 1742 Mayáns published Antonio’s Censura de historias fabulosas, adding a learned commentary, biography, and letters of the author. He had planned nothing less than a total revision of Spanish ecclesiastical history, separating facts from numerous falsifications and legends. He encouraged the Jesuit Andrés Marcos Burriel to continue with his researches in the Toledo archives and to participate in the audacious program of publishing the authentic sources for the history of the Church in Spain from the time of its establishment in the peninsula. Traditionalists in the government and in the two official academies prevented the two scholars from realizing more than a small fraction of their planned work.
Mayáns, however, was not content with correcting the story of the past; he also wished to improve the present. One of his most profound convictions was that the bishops could most effectively reform Spain religiously and culturally; but in order to do so, they must be placed more directly under the Spanish king. Hence he worked hard and successfully to bring about the 1753 Concordat which gave Spanish sovereigns the same patronage over the whole of Spain which they already had over Granada and the overseas dominions.
The author makes no attempt to consider the contemporary Hispanic American scene or to correlate it with Spain. This would probably require another large volume. It would have proved helpful, however, had Mestre at least pointed out a few links with Spanish American history. Thus, Manuel Martí, who had the most decisive influence on Mayáns, was the famous dean of Alicante whose unfavorable remarks about Mexico angered Juan José de Eguiara y Eguren into composing the monumental though unfinished Bibliotheca Mexicana. Andrés Marcos Burriel thoroughly revised and published Miguel Venegas’ Empressas apostólicas under the title of Noticia de la California (3 vols., Madrid, 1754; Mexico City, 1943-1944), which was translated into most of the European languages. He mentions Juan de Palafox, bishop of Puebla (1640-1655) and indicates Mayáns’ efforts to get him canonized. The author seems unaware, however, of the important anti-Jesuit role played by the archbishops of Mexico City and Puebla, Francisco Antonio de Lorenzana and Francisco Fabián y Fuero, or even of their presence in New Spain. No mention is made of the learned works on Hispanic America by Andrés González de Barcia and Lorenzo Boturini, alluded to in the monograph because of their correspondence with Mayáns.
The reader will find that this important monograph fills in numerous details in the more general studies by Jean Sarrailh, L’Espagne éclairée de la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1954), and Richard Herr, The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Spain (Princeton, 1958).
