Italian Madrid: Ambassadors, Regents, and Courtiers in the Hospital de San Pedro y San Pablo

INTRODUCTION

Madrid was, in words of Lope de Vega, an “archive of nations.” A microcosm in which the political world of the Spanish Monarchy was reproduced. All nations were represented there. Among them, the Italian one. The Italians had their own space in the complex formed by the Church and the Hospital of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The Italians living in the city, the embassies, the nunciature and the Council of Italy maintained these buildings. Its direction and management were based on the principle of balance, where independent territories and those under Spanish sovereignty had equal weight.

The structure of this complex formed by the church and the hospital, was a projection of the idea of Italy fixed in the mid-fifteenth century in the treaty of Lodi. The Papacy exercised an arbitral role, regulating the relations between the Italian powers. Under the preeminent authority of the nunciature, the embassies shared with the Council of Italy the administration and management of an institute that had not only welfare but representative functions. Thus, a Neapolitan lived in the Court of Madrid residing in the Court of the King of Naples, as well as a Florentine living under the protection of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. This means that the Italians had their own microcosm, a mirror of a macrocosm that was Italy itself, with the idea [in Panofsky way] that linked the territories that formed their patronage. There, the Council of Italy, in front of the embassies, represented three Italian entities, Naples, Sicily, and Milan. Through this space, the line that separated Spanish and non-Spanish Italy was blurred to give way to an idea of Italy, as could be assumed in Rome the idea of Spain that came from the “quartiere spagnolo,” despite the fragmentation into kingdoms. This space was the gateway to the Spanish Court of very important devotions, religious and intellectual ideas. On the other hand, this contribution will provide a general overview of a little known and studied institution that serves to understand an important aspect of the imperial nature of the Court of the Habsburgs, that of being constituted as the sum of nations that made up the Monarchy.

THE ITALIAN NATION

At the Congress of Vienna, when the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, Chancellor Metternich said a famous phrase: “Italy is again a geographical expression.” This statement has been remembered by the Italians as an insult, but it was meant to mean that there was never a political entity associated with the word Italy. Certainly, there was nothing like an Italian state until 1805 when Napoleon created a kingdom with that name. But it’s not true that it didn’t have an earlier political meaning (Banti, 2001Banti, A.M. (2001) “Telling the Story of the Nation in Risorgimento Italy.” In: C. Isaacs and G. Halfdanarson, eds., Nations and Nationalities in Historical Perspective. Pisa: Edizioni Plus, pp. 15-25.). Since the Middle Ages, that word not only named a long, narrow peninsula that split the Mediterranean into two halves, it was also the name of a nation. In 1549, William Thomas wrote the first history of Italy in the English language to acquaint the British public with the “most flourishing and civilized nation among all others.” In the first Atlas of Europe published by Abraham Hortelius in 1576, Italy was the first territory represented by being “Italy, the lady of the earth, glorious by her deeds, the noblest of the regions of Europe” (Parks, 1961Parks, G. B. (1961) “The First Italianate Englishmen.” Studies in the Renaissance, 8, pp. 197-216. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2856996 ; Bianchi and Karin, 2017Bianchi, P. and Karin E. (2017) Turin and the British in the age of the Grand Tour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.).

While there was no political nationalism, there were nations. These were defined in 1418, at the end of the Council of Constance, as “particular empires” within Christianity. At that time, the Italian, German, French, Spanish and English nations had an expression not only jurisdictional but also cultural and linguistic, that of “accompanying the empire.” The grammars and conversational treatises for the correct handling of language, from Dante’s Volgar Eloquentia (1308) to Bembo’s Dialogo della volgar lingua (1512), made it possible to homologate, unify criteria and identify a group, the political nation. Italian political polycentrism was not an insurmountable obstacle in the construction of identity (Chabod, 1990Chabod, F. (1990) Escritos sobre el Renacimiento. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica.; Kantorowicz, 1951Kantorowicz, E. H. (1951) “Pro patria mori in Medieval Political Thought.” The American Historical Review, 56 (3), pp. 472-492. doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/56.3.472 ). A very similar case to Italy is that of Germany, whose nation in the early modern age cannot be reduced to a geographical expression or a cultural manifestation of thinkers and poets because it also has a certain political consistency, but it is worth remembering that one of the three founding writings of Protestantism was the one Luther addressed to the German nation in 1519 (Nöel, 1992Nöel, J.-F. (1992) “Le concept de nation allemande dans L’empire au XVII^e. Siècle.” XVIIe Siècle, 176 (juillet-septembre), pp. 325-344.).

As early as 1535, Francesco Guicciardini assumed that his readers knew that his History of Italy dealt with a historicized subject, a nation, easily measurable by a rhetorical question:

It is not surprising, however, that this work was chosen by Philip IV of Spain to be translated, to improve his knowledge of the Italian language and of one of the nations over which he was sovereign (Guicciardini, 1899Guicciardini, F. (1899) Historia de Italia : donde se describen todas las cosas sucedidas desde el año 1494 hasta el de 1532 (vol. I). Felipe IV, ed. Madrid: Librería de la Viuda de Hernando y C^a.; Díez del Corral, 1979Díez del Corral, L. (1979) Velázquez, la monarquía e Italia. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.).

These testimonies inform us that in the Renaissance and early Modern Age the nation was understood as something natural. It was a way of “imagining people” (Braude, 1997Braude, B. (1997) “The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods.” The William and Mary Quarterly, 54 (1), pp. 103-142.; Dupont-Ferrier, 1940Dupont-Ferrier, G. (1940) “Le sens des mots ‘patria’ et ‘patrie’ en France au Moyen Age et jusqu’an début du XVIIe siècle.” Revue Historique, 188/190, pp. 89-104.). As Yves Durand observed, this is very clear if the nation sees itself as a minority living in a foreign country, when it forms its administration there (“Una administration intérieure qui lui est propre”), such as a consulate, a quartiere or a building complex (Durand, 1992Durand, Y. (1992) “L’appartenance nationale en France au XVIIe. Siècle : Jus sanguinis ou Jus soli ?” XVIIe. Siècle, 176, pp. 295-310.). From that point of view, the Hospital of the Italians created in Madrid for the “good and benefit of the said nation that serves in His Royal Court” may constitute a good way of access to know that it was the “Italian nation.” ² Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid [AHN], Estado, leg. 2223, Papel que hizo el Dr. Vilano administrador del Hospital de los italianos tocante a su fundación, establecimiento y renta que tiene. Que puso en la secretaría de Nápoles por noticia y por lo que se podría ofrecer, s.d. (circa 1661).

In 1579 King Philip II approved the foundation of the hospital. In 1580 he wrote to the governor of Milan and the viceroys of Naples and Sicily so that the people of those places would contribute to its maintenance. In the letter he wrote to Marco Antonio Colonna, asking him to solicit donations and money from his Sicilian subjects, he exhorted his viceroy of Sicily to ask to “the natives of that kingdom, as the main province of that nation, to favor this work.”³ AHN, Estado, leg. 2223, “Exorteis a los naturales desse Reyno como Provincia tan principal de la dicha nación, a que favorezcan esta obra,” Madrid, February 13th 1688. In this and other documents the same combination of the terms “natural,” “kingdom,” “province” and “nation” is expressed. It is a classification scale that goes from less to more, as the first Spanish Dictionary informs us. The natural is the person born in a place where he has his relatives, and it refers to the homeland “the land where one was born” in a sense of belonging that it only has as a place of origin. The Kingdom has a different dimension, jurisdictional, which sets the membership as a legal act, so “naturalized” means “become natural to some kingdom by privilege.” The province “is a part of extended land,” a geographical expression. While the nation, “from the Latin name NATIO, NIS, is worth kingdom or extended province, as the Spanish nation,” is being understood as a geographical and spatial entity as well as jurisdictional. The Italian nation referred to by Philip II is a geographical space shared by different jurisdictional realities, but whose two poles of reference are the King of Spain and the Pope, “including the subjects of the republics and potentates of Italy” (Covarrubias Orozco, 2006Covarrubias Orozco, S. (2006) Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española. F. C. R. Maldonado y M. Camarero, eds. Madrid: Castalia., ad vocem “natural” p. 773, “patria” p. 808, “provincia” p. 838, “nación” p. 772). The hospital was a microcosm of Italy. As such it reproduced Italian relationships and conflicts. Its activity was directed by a council of six governors (Naples, Milan, Sicily, Rome, Florence, and Genoa) presided over by an administrator who must have been a native of one of those places. In time, the assistance of the papal nuncio and a regent of the Council of Italy was established. Little by little, some traditions were forged: the position of administrator usually fell to an Italian chaplain of the Royal House, the governor for Rome used to be the auditor of the nunciature, the Council of Italy diverted rents and pensions to contribute to the maintenance of the hospital and used it as a place of celebration. The Council of Italy was visible in Madrid celebrating masses, ceremonies, parties and liturgical acts of all kinds because the place was in the ceremonial axis of the city that went from the Retiro to the royal palace by the road of San Jerónimo (it was on the corner with Cedaceros street).⁴ Ibidem.

Construction began in 1580 and was completed in 1583. It was designed by the architect Patricio Cajés (Solache Vilela, 2000Solache Vilela, G. (2000) “La actividad arquitectónica de Patricio Cajés y la obra del Hospital de los Italianos de Madrid.” Madrid: revista de arte, geografía e historia 3, pp. 413-432.). The viceroys had responded to Philip II’s request by managing to collect 65,000 silver ducats, which is what it cost to build it. It was built on a trapezoid-shaped plot of land that the Genoese Stefano Grillo bought from Juan de Calatayud by order of Monsignor Sega, the papal nuncio in Madrid. He acquired a group of houses with all their annexes, which included an old hospital for foundlings. The viceroys had responded to Philip II’s request by managing to collect 65,000 silver ducats, which is what it cost to build it. It was built on a trapezoid-shaped parcel of land that the Genoese Stefano Grillo bought from Juan de Calatayud by order of Monsignor Sega, the papal nuncio in Madrid. He acquired a group of houses with all their annexes that included an old hospital for foundlings. From the beginning, the nunciature protected the hospital, but it lacked the resources to maintain it, hence the participation of the embassies and mainly the Council of Italy, which on December 13^th, 1605, demanded that, in exchange for paying a fixed income to maintain the hospital, the nunciature, should not intervene in any matter of government of the institution. ⁵Cofradía de san Pedro y san Pablo, primitiva fundacion del Pontifício y Real Hospital de Italianos en 1579. Madrid: Oficina de D. Francisco Martinez Dávila, 1825, folleto de 32 páginas.

In the church, the religious rites were celebrated in the Italian way. It was a small temple of a single nave with four half points at each side where the altarpieces were, the walls were decorated with pilasters and frescoes. In its ornament, there were some images, paintings and sacred objects that were taken to the school of Santa Isabel at the end of the 19^th century.⁶ Márquez, Ricardo “Hospital de los Italianos - Carrera de San Jerónimo” Blog Historias Matritenses, entrada de martes 11 de enero de 2011, https://historias-matritenses.blogspot.com/2011/01/hospital-de-los-italianos-carrera-de.html [consultado el 16/septiembre/2019].

HOSPITALS AND FOUNDATIONS

Ponz’s brief description of the hospital in volume five of his Viaje de España (Madrid, Joaquín Ibarra, 1776, pp. 306-307) was repeated literally by later Madrid chroniclers, including Mesonero Romanos. It was a poor church, with few works of art, being of some importance those of the 18^th century. The building was demolished in 1885, homes were built on its site, and in 1988 they were expropriated to expand the offices of the Congress of Deputies. Today is a place that goes completely unnoticed but was of great importance during the reigns of Philip III, Philip IV and Charles II representing Italy among the nations of the Monarchy (Lo Cascio Loureiro, 1932Lo Cascio Loureiro, H. (1932) Historia de Madrid e Historia documentada de la antigua Iglesia Hospital de S. Pedro y S. Pablo de Madrid, titulada de los italianos. Madrid: Imprenta de Comercio.; Rivero Rodríguez, 2012Rivero Rodríguez, M. (2012) “El hospital de los italianos de Madrid y el Consejo de Italia en el reinado de Felipe IV: consejos territoriales y representación de los reinos.” In: Actas de la XI reunión científica de la Fundación Española de Historia Moderna. Granada: Universidad de Granada, vol. 1, pp. 1141-1152.).

In the 17^th century there were a large number of charity centres in Madrid. The hospital of Saint Peter and Saint Paul of the Italians was the oldest institution of the “national charitable institutions” at Court. In 1594 a Flemish resident in Madrid, Charles of Antwerp, took the hospital of the Italians as an example to create the hospital of St. Andrew of the Flemish, to which he bequeathed all his patrimony, to care for all the nationals of his homeland who were in need or abandoned, as stated in his will dated November 9^th, 1601. Following both examples, in 1606 the hospital of Saint Anthony of the Portuguese was founded (since 1689 of the Germans), where the brotherhood of the refuge was installed in 1617. In 1616, Don Gaspar Pons founded the hospital of Montserrat to care for the natives of the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon. In 1613 the hospital of San Luis of the French was created, and that of San Patricio of the Irish in 1635. Other communities, such as the Navarrese, built their hospitals at the end of the 17^th century and during the 18^th century, showing the change from a Catholic monarchy to a Spanish one, as the new foundations were treated as provincial and not national, so Navarrese, Leonese, Galician, Andalusian, etc. They created their hospitals and charity centres (Lo Cascio Loureiro, 1932Lo Cascio Loureiro, H. (1932) Historia de Madrid e Historia documentada de la antigua Iglesia Hospital de S. Pedro y S. Pablo de Madrid, titulada de los italianos. Madrid: Imprenta de Comercio.; Rivero Rodríguez, 2012Rivero Rodríguez, M. (2012) “El hospital de los italianos de Madrid y el Consejo de Italia en el reinado de Felipe IV: consejos territoriales y representación de los reinos.” In: Actas de la XI reunión científica de la Fundación Española de Historia Moderna. Granada: Universidad de Granada, vol. 1, pp. 1141-1152.).

The national charity centres made Madrid the court of a world empire. The national hospitals and churches, linked to the territorial councils, manifested the multinational nature of the Monarchy: the building of the hospital of the Portuguese was paid for by the Council of Portugal, that of Monserrat of the Crown of Aragon was maintained by the Council of Aragon. The fact that the Council of Italy “supported” the hospital of the Italians seems to have been motivated by similar reasons as those that led the Council of Portugal to protect the Portuguese nation in 1606 and the Council of Aragon to protect the natives of those provinces in 1617: the consolidation of ties that closely linked each council to the nation “from which it takes its name” (Rivero Rodríguez, 2004bRivero Rodríguez, M. (2004b) “Italia en la Monarquía Hispánica (siglos XVI-XVII).” Studia Historica. Historia Moderna, 26, pp. 19-41.).

These institutions corresponded to the political framework of a Monarchy of Nations (Recio Morales, 2014Recio Morales, O. (2014) “Los espacios físicos de representatividad de las comunidades extranjeras en España: un estado de la cuestión.” In: Las corporaciones de nación en la Monarquía hispánica (1580-1750): Identidad, patronazgo y redes de sociabilidad. Madrid: Fundación Carlos de Amberes, pp. 13-33.). Philip IV of Spain conceived himself as the sovereign of many nations, feeling obliged to study and know their languages in order to be king of all and also king of each one:

THE COUNCIL OF ITALY AND THE REGENT VALENZUELA

In his important paper at the International Congress of Historical Sciences in Stockholm in 1960, Jaime Vicens Vives was the first to value the creation of the Council of Italy as an event of equivalent value to the founding of the Council of the Indies. In his opinion, the historians of the administration had given much attention to the American case and almost nothing to the Italian one, being both decisive in a temporal segment that opens in 1520 and closes in 1559 (Vicens Vives, 1971Vicens Vives, J. (1971) “The Administrative Structure of the State in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” In: H. J. Cohn, ed., Government in Reformation Europe 1520-1560. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 58-87. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01142-1_3 ). Other historians, such as Beneyto and Lalinde included the Council of Aragon as a founding element of what Batista I Roca, Koenigsberger and John Elliott identified a composite monarchy. They made a literal transcription by Solórzano de Pereira that said that the king should govern as if he were only sovereign of each part and sovereign of the whole (Beneyto, 1950Beneyto, J. (1950) España y el problema de Europa. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.; Koenigsberger, 1972Koenigsberger, H. G. (1972) “El arte de gobierno de Felipe II.” Revista de Occidente, 107, pp. 127-159.; Batista i Roca, 1975Batista i Roca, J. M. (1975) “Introducción.” In: H. G. Koenigsberger, La práctica del imperio. Madrid: Ediciones de la Revista de Occidente.; Elliott, 2009Elliott, J. H. (2009) “Una Europa de monarquías compuestas.” In: España, Europa y el mundo de ultramar (1500-1800). Madrid: Taurus, pp. 31-50.).

This meant that there was only a personal union of the king with each kingdom (when he had the title of king), or of a duke in each duchy and so on. However, the territorial councils were much more than that as they allowed governing whole sets of territories and not each territory in particular. The councils of the Indies Aragon and Italy formed all the territories under their jurisdiction as a single space, and their rulings and judgments affected the whole, as the regent Carlo Tapia showed when he published his Decisionis Supremi Italiae Senatus in 1622 (Rivero Rodríguez, 2004aRivero Rodríguez, M. (2004a) “La preeminencia del Consejo de Italia y el sentimiento de la nación italiana.” In: La monarquía de las naciones: patria, nación y naturaleza en la monarquía de España. Madrid: Fundación Carlos de Amberes, pp. 505-528.; Ruiz Martín, 1948Ruiz Martín, F. (1948) “Notas sobre el Consejo de Italia y la Sección Secretarías Provinciales del AGS.” Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, 54, pp. 99-106.).

In 1634 was published another important book about the Council of Italy, the second volume of Consilia sive responsa iuris written by Juan Bautista Valenzuela y Velázquez. He was a jurist born into a noble family (of Cordovan origin) in Cuenca on June 2^nd, 1574 and died in Salamanca on February 2^nd, 1645. He studied Law in Sigüenza, obtaining his doctorate at the age of seventeen, and practiced jurisprudence in the Academies of that time, thus refining his training. Philip III, given his prestige, sent him to Naples in 1613, where he joined the camarilla of the Count of Lemos. He was appointed president of the Council of Santa Clara of Naples and a member of the Council of Italy, among other distinguished positions. On his return to Spain, he would end up sitting on the Royal and Supreme Council of Castile on January 7^th, 1633, being Vicar General of the Bishopric of Cuenca. His most important books are Defensio Justitiae et justificationis monitorii amissi et promulgati per S.S.N.D. Paulum papam quintum, XVII die mensis aprilis anno Domini 1606, brought to the press in Valencia in 1607, and Consiliorum sive responsorum juris, with editions in Naples (1618 and 1634), Madrid (1653) and Lyon (1671) (Fabbricatore, 2018Fabbricatore, E. (2018) “Juan Bautista Valenzuela Velázquez.” In: Diccionario Biográfico Español. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia. http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/4788/juan-bautista-valenzuela-velazquez.).

Consiliorum was a very popular work among Neapolitan jurists in the second half of the 17^th century (Rovito, 1981Rovito, P. (1981) Respublica dei togati: giuristi e società nella Napoli del Seicento. Napoli: Jovene.). We discover a diary wrote by this counsellor of King Philip IV and with it a large collection of handwritten notes and résumés, which, in our opinion, are preparatory texts for legal opinions, perhaps judgments or a treaty of law. In this manuscript shows how the Council of Italy was the construction of more than a century and lists the different instructions. The first ones in 1556 in London Then the instructions to the secretary in 1557, later the instruction and appointment of the president prince of Melito in 1558, then the instructions to the council in 1559, the visit in 1567, the new instructions in 1579, the trial of the visit in 1580, the instructions to the secretaries in 1595 and finally the documents of reform in 1599. In other words, the institution was built up over time in response to the various needs of the monarchy.⁹ Biblioteca Nacional de España [BNE], Ms. 989, “Documentos del Consejo de Italia.” In the first years, the structure of the Council was conceived in a compound way within the empire of Carlos V and the affirmation of Solórzano de Pereira was made effective. However, during the reign of Felipe II each council was constructed as an instrument at the service of the defence and protection of the jurisdiction of the king this way the councils surpassed its consultative character that as its name indicates was its main function and began to reinforce its character of supreme courts. The Council of Italy was originally a small commission in charge of advising the young Philip II in the government of the territories that his father had given him when he married Mary Tudor after the visit of 1567. the Italian domains were in the hands of the viceroys and of the governor of Milan Francisco Fernández de Liébana the visitor of the Council’s papers observed that Italy was governed from Italy being necessary to act in a unitary way in subjects as complicated as that of the jurisdictions between ecclesiastical and civil authorities (Rivero Rodríguez, 1998Rivero Rodríguez, M. (1998) Felipe II y el gobierno en Italia. Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para la Conmemoración de los Centenarios de Felipe II y Carlos V.).

The visit resulted in the drafting of the 1579 instructions setting out the jurisdiction of the Council. In 1622 the jurisprudence generated by the institution allowed the publication of the volume by Carlo Tapia. Although historians have not paid much attention to it, the problem of jurisdictions is the column on which the whole system of royal power was built in the time of confessionalism. The theoretical and juridical reflection that Valenzuela offers us is very much related to these problems. He gathers documents and opinions that go from the letter of Fernando the Catholic to the Duke of Rivagorza to the conclusions of Senator Rovida during the meeting of jurisdictions held in Rome during the reign of Philip III (Rivero Rodríguez, 2018Rivero Rodríguez, M. (2018) El Conde Duque de Olivares. la Búsqueda de la Privanza Perfecta. Madrid: Polifemo.).

It should be noted that Valenzuela did not have a first-rate legal education, he did not study in Salamanca, he studied in Sigüenza and he forged his career in Italy. We do not know that he was in Bologna, which makes it an atypical example of the career of Spanish lawyers in the Italian sphere since almost all of them had been trained there.

The first news that we have of Valenzuela places him in the context of the interdict of Venice, writing in favour of the Holy See. His writings are composed of arguments very similar to those maintained by the circle of the Valido of Philip III, the Duke of Lerma, which are expressed in the treaty of Josep de la Fuente, the two luminaries of the earth. He returned to Spain and was appointed Regent of the Council of Italy. He arrived in Madrid just at the beginning of the Olivares government, but he was at the opposite party. With his anti-royalist thinking, this jurist left us a very important work, both on religious, moral and political issues. He began his office in Madrid at a very important moment in which the Hospital of the Italians led a very vital change in the religious culture of the Court of Philip IV (Fabbricatore, 2018Fabbricatore, E. (2018) “Juan Bautista Valenzuela Velázquez.” In: Diccionario Biográfico Español. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia. http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/4788/juan-bautista-valenzuela-velazquez.; Rovito, 1981Rovito, P. (1981) Respublica dei togati: giuristi e società nella Napoli del Seicento. Napoli: Jovene.).

In 1622 Monsignor Adam Makowski, ambassador of the King of Poland in Naples, travelled to Madrid on an extraordinary mission, accompanied by the Neapolitan Theatines Placido Frangipane Mirto and Crescencio Vivo. This trip, motivated by the eternal lawsuit of Bari, had unexpected consequences since it introduced in the Madrid Court a new devotion that would have a great impact on the history of Spanish spirituality since it was the cause of the first foundation of the Theatine Order in Spain.

The Theatines developed a very important change at the end of the 16^th century, in the chapters of 1595 and 1601 they created new constitutions that were confirmed by Pope Clement VIII by a brief of July 28^th, 1604. The book of the Latin constitutions was a work that gave a new meaning to the order and had much importance later in the spirituality of Cardinal Berulle, promoting a devotional line that prefigured Jansenism (Andreu, 1974aAndreu, F. (1974a) “I Teatini dal 1524 al 1974.” Regnum Dei, 100, pp. 8-83.).

This reform had its beginning in the preaching of St. Andrea Avelino in Naples, who from 1565 promoted the creation of seminaries endowed with fixed incomes for their maintenance. Avelino was a disciple of the founders of the order, Gian Piero Caraffa, and Gaetano da Thiene. An order that, like the Jesuits, proposed an alternative to the traditional contemplative or mendicant orders, focusing on the education and reform of the people. During the 16^th century, the order expanded throughout Italy, from San Andrea de la Valle in Rome to Naples, then to Genoa, and through this order, they created houses in Milan, Cremona, Lecce, Florence, Vicenza, Bergamo, Bologna, Modena, Palermo, Ferrara, Verona, Turin, Cosenza, Parma, and Brescia. Only in Italy, the order had 50 houses and, according to a survey ordered by Pope Innocent X in 1650, the number of Theatines was 1090 individuals in the whole peninsula. Its success in Italy contrasts with its slow expansion abroad, perhaps because of its strong identification with Italian spirituality and particularly with the Roman Counter-Reformation. In 1622, that is, as soon as the Propaganda Fide congregation was created, they sent missions to Georgia and the Indies (Fiorelli, 2011Fiorelli, V. (2011) “«Apparati, musichi e sermoni in lode di lui.» Il disciplinamento devozionale dei Teatini napoletani nel secolo XVII.” In: D. A. D’Alessandro, ed., Sant’andrea avellino e i teatini nella napoli del viceregno spagnolo. Napoli: M. D’Auria Editore, 251-272.; Oliver, 1983Oliver, A. (1983) Ursula Benincasa : una vida entre el cielo y la tierra. Madrid: Delegación Española de Religiosas Teatinas.).

Naples was, after Rome, where the Theatines had the greatest strength. Frangipane-Mirto had been a disciple of Andrea Avelino in Naples, in whose house he made his profession on February 2^nd, 1602, and he took advantage of the invitation of Father Makowski to promote the expansion of his order in the Monarchy. He was very successful at first, and shortly after his arrival in Madrid, King Philip IV appointed him as a preacher of the royal house. As such, he taught at the Hospital de los italianos and, when Andrea Avelino was beatified, great festivities were held there between November 9^th and 18^th, 1625. On the 10^th, the feast of the new blessed, the king attended the liturgical solemnities celebrated in the church of the hospital, accompanied by the patriarch of the Indies, his chaplain, the foreign ambassadors, the nuncio Cardinal Sacchetti, and a large entourage. The expenses were paid “on the first day by His Majesty the King, the second by Her Majesty the Queen, the third by the Count of Benevento, the fourth by Cardinal Sacchetti, the fifth by Don Hieronymus Colonna and Abbot Ursino, the sixth by the ambassador of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the seventh by the Genoese nation, the eighth by the Neapolitan nation” (Oliver, 1991Oliver, A. (1991) Los teatinos. Su carisma, su historia, su fisonomía. Madrid: Curia Provincial de los Clérigos Regulares.). In 1629, Frangipane-Mirto succeeded in getting the Theatines to take possession of the church of the Hospital of the Italians in Madrid (where they remained until 1644) (Andreu, 1974bAndreu, F. (1974b) “Madrid y los Teatinos.” En Los Clérigos regulares -teatinos-. 450 Aniversario de su fundación, 65. Palma de Mallorca: Curia Provincial de los Clérigos Regulares.).

In Valenzuela’s diary, we can observe an intense devotional life that seems to us to be very much linked to this special relationship with the Theatines, especially because of the important role that the Nunciature takes in the program of sermons that are given in the pulpit and how from this place a new religious culture radiates in the Court (Andreu, 1974bAndreu, F. (1974b) “Madrid y los Teatinos.” En Los Clérigos regulares -teatinos-. 450 Aniversario de su fundación, 65. Palma de Mallorca: Curia Provincial de los Clérigos Regulares.).

The religious festivities held in the church and hospital were the centrepiece of the life calendar of the officers of the Council of Italy. They met on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at the president’s house, did their work at home, and when all the councillors met, they did so only to vote on matters. The consultations were prepared in their own homes in small committees of two or three lawyers, not many more. It is clear from the reading of the text that they did not spend much time on their work. On Ash Wednesday, the officers would go to the church of the Italians in “the form of a council” (en forma de consejo) to listen to the sermon and to celebrate the services at the beginning of Lent. From then on, every Wednesday and Friday in Lent, they went to St. Peter and St. Paul’s Hospital, and the Council only met on Mondays to deal with unfinished business. After Lent, the council would return to its normal work. ¹⁰ BNE, Ms. 989, ff. 51-54, Quotations of the year 1626.

Through the diary, we observe that the Council of Italy, besides being a high court, fundamental for the government of the Italian states, was also a significant organizer of Italian cultural life in Madrid. In Valenzuela’s record, there are notes on small episodes of daily life, feasts, sermons, ceremonies, and events in the life and death of Italian officers in the service of Philip IV. On Ash Wednesday 1628, the Count of Monterrey, who was a very early riser, took all the members of the council out of bed to go from his palace to hear the sermon in the church of San Pedro and San Pablo. No one complained, but the capricious character of the president and the docility of the councillors are noted. On February 23^rd, 1632, the Countess of Olivares invited the members of several councils to watch a comedy of “tramoyas” in her house, there was a dispute over the seats and Valenzuela regretted having obtained the one that corresponded to him by hierarchy. It was not a good place: “we had a seat under the lamps that should have been placed in the middle and drops of oil fell on the sides and stained the ministers, and although the party was good, it was by chance.”¹¹ “Nos cupo el asiento debajo de las lámparas que debiendo haber puesto en medio pusieron a los lados y caían gotas de aceite que manchaban a los ministros y aunque la fiesta fue buena tuvo este azar” op.cit. fol. 62vº. We also found stories about bullfighting festivals to which the Council of Italy contributed a significant amount of money, 2500 “reales.” ¹² Íbidem.

The festivals in Madrid were celebrated with a certain regularity, following a cycle as we know from the literature of the time, but sometimes there were exceptions. On folio 62, without indicating the date, a “Roman-style” fiesta is described, a fight between a bear and a bull. The members of the Italian Council could not see it because no one opened the door to the box, they were consoled to know that the show was a failure. I am the bull they did not want to fight they went around the ring and finally decided to retire the bear as it was a very expensive animal and they took it back to the real zoo. The king had asked for a gun and shot the bull dead.

A careful reading of the whole document shows us a set of activities that have no value or have little for the historian. If we get closer to this everyday life, we observe the small changes in life in which the great political events have no importance. Valenzuela was in Madrid in a few crucial years for the affirmation of the power of the Count-Duke of Olivares, it is amazing that the only mention of this person is the invitation of the Countess to see a play. Nothing is said about the political struggles of 1627 nor is anything said about how Olivares became the owner of everything in 1628. It is strange because the Court was a small society.

Valenzuela left the council of Italy in 1632 when Olivares reached the zenith of his power. It is striking that in the years covered by the diary, from 1626 to 1632, nothing is said about the great political projects of the monarchy. Nor do we find references to court life, we see only a fragment of the small world of the Italian counsellors at court and only one aspect. The booklet of the diary is sewn among documents and notes of a juridical nature, opinions, sentences, chapters of works of jurisprudence, commentaries, instructions, etc. The diary, moreover, lacks order; it is made up of small notes as if they were loose ideas that will later be developed or put as examples in a future text. It collects facts lived by the author related to ceremonies, feasts, funerals, sermons, comedies and some anecdotes that seem to be evidence collected to get an idea of the festive and ceremonial order in which the Council of Italy lived. These notes will be used in the second volume of Consilia sive responsa iuris published in 1634.

The most interesting thing is that in the line in which Clifford Geertz defined the “Theatre State,” we observe in Regent Valenzuela the protagonist of the representation of his person and those around him in the world, which is the Court. He lives in a corner of the Court, but there is his place, measured and regulated, his vital horizon does not go any further. In the jurisdictional conflicts he describes, he is not interested in the legal substance, the jurisprudence, but the visible form, the precedence. He is interested in form, not reason. In short, this document allows us to imagine reality, to form an image or what Clifford Gertz proposed as a subject of study in historical anthropology, the “felt life,” the immediate experiences and how they are interpreted in each moment (Geertz, 1977Geertz, C. (1977) The Interpretation Of Cultures. London: Basic Books., 1980Geertz, C. (1980) Negara: The Theatre State in 19^th Century Bali. Bali and Political Theory. London: Basic Books.). The textures of everyday life, of the ordinary people, which allow us to perceive the value and character of the extraordinary. Traces of lived experience, such as this diary, are marks of a position of the route in a contextual space. This is what Wachsman calls “material landscape,” the relationship with places and spaces, their emotional and sensorial dimensions that reproduce lived experience (Rüger y Wachsmann, 2015Rüger, J. and Wachsmann, N. (2015) Rewriting German history: new perspectives on modern Germany. New Haven & London: Taylor and Francis.).