[127] A notion of difference resides at the core of all complex social structures. Coherent patterns of distinction are held to delimit and render intelligible virtually every sphere of collective belief and activity. Systems of social classification range from the simple to the highly elaborate--from elementary binary oppositions like male/female or left/right, to infinitely articulated hierarchies and gradations. Whether couched in the static language of stratification or in the kinesis of changing relations, the principle of distinction is seen to influence both social organization and its symbolic representations.

Early modern men and women employed a host of criteria in forging their own categories of social analysis. There was no single, overriding mode of determining "place" in society. Rather, numerous systems of classification complemented (and contradicted) each other, as a broad range of discriminatory schemae--some strictly functional, others more broadly "ideological"--vied for the allegiance of contemporaries. ⁽¹⁾ To be sure, certain factors of selection were acknowledged explicitly as such; others won more muted recognition. A brief remark from one of the more shrewd observers of the seventeenth century reveals [128] the possibilities of implicit overlap between rival categories. Sancho Panza's weary dictum that "there are only two families in the world . . . the haves and the have-nots," is a time-honored description of contemporary society. ⁽²⁾ As a characterization of early modern realities, it is at the same time compelling and over-simplified. One could hardly quibble with its allusion to the inescapable connection between wealth and power. Yet it also appears simplistic, in that during the ancien régime social distinctions were never so starkly (nor effortlessly) delineated. At no point did wealth automatically translate itself into prestige and political power. Yet high social status and political influence were difficult to maintain, much less achieve, without substantial economic resources. In short, there is more to Sancho's observation than meets the eye. This caution applies to virtually all contemporary social classifications. The juridical separation of nobles and commoners; the moralistic distinction between "shameful" and "dishonest" poor; the hierarchy of corporations defining representation in city government--the full meaning of any of these ideal systems cannot be perceived without reference to a host of implicit assumptions regarding, say, the association of different social groups with specific productive functions.

The very multiplicity of definitions of public identity obliges the historian to pay close attention to the precise terms that contemporaries used to describe their world. Study of early modern "social vocabulary" helps us unravel the mystery of how (and why) the social, economic, and political transformations described above found representation in the cultural sphere. ⁽³⁾ This bygone lexicon constitutes a decipherable code through which historical actors articulated their values and beliefs. At the same time, the continual reproduction of language patterns--the [129] construction of imagination within the "prison-house of language"-- decisively influenced the identity and comportment of all social classes.

Examination of linguistic usage is an especially valuable approach to the study of periods of intense social transformation. Shifts in language reflected and in turn helped shape patterns of change. As we have seen, the early modern era witnessed a crucial alteration in the patrician image of self and society. Elite visions of hierarchy formerly centering around racial and biological determinants of character and social standing now took on a new dimension. Perceived cultural differences irrevocably joined or replaced these criteria in depicting--and justifying--the existence of a separate ruling class. ⁽⁴⁾ To a large degree the elite manipulated knowledge as a public test--one that presupposed a schema of cultural differentiation closely modelled after existing patterns of power and subordination. A shared vocabulary distinguishing "high" from "low" in explicitly cultural terms bound together diverse expressions of patrician self-consciousness. This lexicon rested upon a series of stark dichotomies opposing elite "knowledge" to popular "ignorance," high "enlightenment" to base "obscurity." The promotion of a reified notion of cultura itself placed the finishing touches on the quest for legitimacy by the recomposed upper class of early modern Barcelona. It is to "culture" and other such terms that we must now turn in order to trace their role in marking class boundaries.

Most previous surveys of "keywords" like cultura have approached them from the perspective of the "history of ideas." This method focuses on the evolving use of terms within imaginative literature and philosophy. Shifts in linguistic usage are held to represent larger transformations in the realm of normative thought. The task of the historian of ideas is "to observe the ways in which the multivocality of the word sometimes facilitates [130] or promotes (though it doubtless seldom or never solely causes) changes--some of them revolutionary changes--in the reigning fashions in ideas." ⁽⁵⁾ Individual words and their multiple meanings thus serve as keys to the philosophical beliefs underlying them. As a result, they are habitually sought within the formal discourse of the elite. ⁽⁶⁾

Another dominant tendency within the historiography of the term "culture" has been to emphasize its role as an antecedent to present-day anthropological usage. "Culture" in the sense of the discrete body of "manners" and "customs" of diverse social and ethnic groups first emerged during the eighteenth century. However, this meaning had deep roots in much older cognates. ⁽⁷⁾ The word "civility," in particular, with its strong classical resonance, enjoyed a major revival during the Renaissance and early modern period. Writers initially employed it to denote the mental categories and comportment of educated Europeans coming into increasingly close contact with peoples outside their continent. Soon this normative concept of a single, unitary civilitas gave way to a more relativistic notion of diverse "civilizations," each with its own language, ecology, and mores. ⁽⁸⁾ The eventual supplanting of "civilization" in the latter sense by "culture" owed much to the German Enlightenment, which consciously extended the term Kultur the customs and "folkways" of native Europeans as well. ⁽⁹⁾

Neither approach to the linguistic history of "culture" has examined the full historical record. Rather, they have limited [131] study of its usage exclusively to the expository writings--usually philosophical--of the intellectual elite. Little attempt has been made to bring to bear documents emanating from other levels of discourse. ⁽¹⁰⁾ In the following pages we shall see how "culture" and other keywords were used not only in formal argumentation, but also in school ceremonies, pamphlet literature, carnival poems, diaries, civic fetes, and even in the manifesto of a peasant revolt. Expanding the scope of study from the relatively narrow confines of philosophical commentary to a more broadly based social etymology brings us much closer to the meaning of cultura most familiar to early modern men and women. Resort to a wider range of sources also affords insights into the distant origins of the term's present usage.

The word "genius" possessed a variety of meanings during the early modern period. ⁽¹²⁾ It often referred to a familiar spirit or personal daimon accompanying individuals in their endeavors, creative and otherwise. This was the sense of the eighteenth-century genre of political satire entitled Letters of Ingenios from the Court, which habitually interchanged the terms "genius" or "genie" with duende or spirit. Ingenio also signified a general concept of reason or intelligence. Confidential assessments of the personal characteristics of local Jesuit novices employed the term as a synonym for intellectual capacity. Superiors classified their charges in three categories of ingenio: buen (good), mediano (medium), or corto (little). ⁽¹³⁾ Moreover, a particular craft could be seen as requiring more "genius" than others. Such at least was the rationale underlying the traditional corporate hierarchy, [133] which accorded superiority to trades relying more on the mind than the hand. Thus, as late as 1816, Barcelona's wool and silk dyers defended changing their corporation's name from "guild" to colegio by claiming that their profession "requires, thanks to its close contact with the sciences, more ingenio than other trades." ⁽¹⁴⁾

Within the Hispanic context, "genius" most frequently denoted a particular inner leaning or inclination. In the eyes of contemporaries, this "disposition"--the strong individualism of which merits emphasis--was determined largely by the vagaries of biological inheritance. External factors like climate or, for the more astrologically inclined, the alignment of the stars were also believed to influence differences in intellectual capacity and personal character. Despite a growing tendency to associate genius specifically with artistic distinction, most early modern writers used the term to refer to a differential psychology of individual disposition. Italian essayists like Antonio Persio, Tommaso Garzoni, and Marco Pellegrini pioneered the systematic exposition of this interpretation of ingegno.⁽¹⁵⁾ But the most influential statement of this view came from the pen of a Spanish author, Juan Huarte de San Juan. His Examination of Men's Wits(1575) popularized the usage which assigned to each human being a specific "natural" disposition. This "talent" or character was held to be imparted at birth, and determined the conduct of that person for life. ⁽¹⁶⁾ Huarte's treatise proved a huge success, going through at least fourteen printings in four languages by 1600. Despite its initial proscription by the Inquisition, copies of the Examination were found in many of Barcelona's public and private libraries.

[134] Its owners included the honored citizen Joaquín Setantí, himself the author of an interesting collection of aphorisms (1617); the physicians Jeroni Tarrassa (1629) and Joan Nadal de Prats (1648); D. Pau Ignasi de Dalmases, the founder of the noble Academy (1718); and the library of the Jesuit school (inventoried 1785). ⁽¹⁷⁾ Not surprisingly, numerous Spanish authors tried to follow in his footsteps. For example, Diego de Gurrea, an Aragonese preacher and tutor to the offspring of the Duke of Cardona, argued in a 1627 pedagogical treatise that ingenios,while not immutable, were natural endowments distributed by God, who thus indelibly marked the intellectual and moral inclinations of all individuals. ⁽¹⁸⁾

Usage of the term underwent at least two significant transformations during the early modern era. While the older sense of innate character or disposition survived well into the eighteenth century, it was soon overtaken by the refinement specifying "genius" as markedly superior intellect and wit. The habit of prefacing ingenio with alto, raro, or lúcido was dropped in favor of letting the term stand without modifiers. The writer whose work best reflected this transition was the Aragonese Jesuit Baltasar Gradan (1601-1658). In his hands "genius" shed its earlier neutralism to become synonymous with wit, acumen, and general intellectual preeminence. Moreover, in works such as the Art of Genius (1642), Gracián forged an irrevocable association between superior intellect and its particular stylistic manifestation in the form of intricate and complex conceits. ⁽¹⁹⁾ Not  [135]  surprisingly, local Jesuits eagerly appropriated Gracián's innovations for their academic exercises. Beginning in the seventeenth century, Jesuit school celebrations made countless references to ingenio, understood now as the effortless combination of superior intellect and highly witty rhetoric. Thus in 1673, for example, the Barcelona collegium held a "joust of geniuses" to celebrate the canonization of St. Francis Borgia. ⁽²⁰⁾

The second shift in usage involved broadening application of the term from individual intelligence to the superior intellectual inclinations of an entire social class--in this instance, the civic elite. The growing tendency of writers to regard ingenio as one of the essential "proofs of nobility" demonstrates that the identification was not limited only to certain sectors of the ruling class. The shift in the use of "genius" from reference to the innate character or special intellectual endowment of specific individuals toward a more general, collective association with the upper class reflected a decisive change in the self-image of the urban elite as a whole.

In the long run, however, a more restricted usage of the word triumphed. By the end of the eighteenth century, "genius" usually denoted the creative endowment of uniquely gifted persons instead of social groups. ⁽²¹⁾ Ironically, emphasis on artistic and literary talent resurrected the term's original, individualistic connotation. Antoni Capmany's Philosophy of Eloquence(1777)-- one of the most important treatises on rhetoric of the Spanish Enlightenment--illustrates this transition. Capmany's text drew upon both the traditional sense of ingenio as innate disposition, as well as the newer, proto-Romantic usage associating "genius" with individual artistic temperaments "both grand and sublime." ⁽²²⁾ Fortunately, early modern writers did not lack other means of indicating intellectual distinction. They pressed into service a variety of terms to this end. Especially notable among
[136] these was the imagery of sun and light that made the eighteenth century its own.

The "most obsequious" D. Francesch de Prada spared no pains to depict his fellow members of the Jesuit alumni association in--literally--the most brilliant light possible:

The resplendent Prince of Light, Living ray of Celestial Fire, Scorching volcano of Divine Love, Burning sphere of the most holy fire, Lustrous Phoebus . . . Captain of the most famous stars . . . , In short, divine Ignatius of Loyola. . . . [137] To the teaching of your followers We owe the light that illumines [our] ingenios. . . . ⁽²⁴⁾

[138]

The schema of intellectual distinction underpinning such imagery differed from that linked to "genius" in at least one crucial respect. Unlike ingenio, with its strong overtones of innate and inalterable character, the "light of knowledge" was viewed as a quality that could be deliberately acquired. Of course, some texts did suggest that the unequal distribution of "lights" among [139] human beings had been predetermined by birth. ⁽²⁷⁾ But by far the great majority of usages specified that luces could be accumulated through education. Hence the boast of the law teacher Lluis Valencia that his students "have emerged from my instruction so luzidos [literally "shining"] that they have been able to obtain and illumine (illustrar) university chairs and posts on the bench, state councils, and in the Church." D. Josep Faust de Potau wondered at the power of education to confer "the light through which [our] genius is illumined." Still other forms of creative activity were believed capable of adding to the cumulative store of resplendent knowledge. Thus Josep Mercader in his eulogy of the Count of Peralada praised the latter's "noble exercise" of "investigating the truth hidden away in archives, thus adding many luces to the literary sphere." ⁽²⁸⁾

Not surprisingly, such splendid reflection was, like ingenio, restricted almost exclusively to members of the elite. In fact, the urban nobility exhibited an insatiable craving for description in the imagery of sun and light. Its thirst was hardly slaked by the flood of formulaic panegyrics preached at aristocratic funerals, annual meetings of the Jesuit alumni congregation, and the St. George's Day celebrations of the Bras Militar. Self-depiction in the guise of Apollo, his son Phaeton, and the Phoenix scored clamorous successes among local notables. Even the terminology used to describe the everyday activities of the aristocracy drew heavily upon the imagery of light. To Pujades, nobles were "lustrous people" (gent de lustre); in the eyes of Bosch, aristocrats were "all those who illumine and shine forth (illustran y resplendeixen) in nobility, lineage, knowledge, virtue, strength, office, and in other ways." ⁽²⁹⁾ In 1682, the Noble Estate argued that the inclusion of its members in the municipal government of Girona would "confer the noble order's lustre" upon that city, while in [140] the Barcelona Academy D. Agustí de Copons approvingly cited Aristotle's definition of nobility as a claritas.) ⁽³⁰⁾

Contemporaries also habitually employed the vocabulary of light to describe patriciany fêtes and ceremonies. The lawyer Josep Montfar i Sorts dutifully noted reports of a "lucidissima and costly equestrian festival" staged in Paris by the peers of France for Louis XIV. Yet the Barcelona aristocracy was hardly to be outdone, if one were to believe Parets' description of the luzidas floats mounted by local nobles during their reception for the Queen of Hungary in 1630. ⁽³¹⁾ This imagery--also employed with great frequency in contemporary descriptions of religious processions and festivals--was allowed most extensive play in Francesch Tagell's poetic account of a series of private Carnival balls held in 1720 in several noble mansions on the Carrer de Monteada. At the beginning of his description of each party, Tagell praised the countless "lamps, chandeliers, and candles" set out "to illumine everything," especially those aristocrats "who have come to lustre [their] beauty and grace." "This lustrous salon"; the "brilliant sphere"; the "noble, illustrious, beautiful group from whose singular luz love forges its darts"--in expressions such as these the author repeatedly wed lavish aristocratic display to the vocabulary of brilliance, splendor, and reflection. ⁽³²⁾

Metaphors of illumination continued to be used in the eighteenth century to set apart the distinctive knowledge and comportment deemed characteristic of elites throughout Spain. Meanwhile, the vocabulary of light underwent a retrenchment similar to that visited upon the term "genius." The meaning of the term luces gradually narrowed to "enlightenment," either in [141] the sense of the European-wide literary movement of that name, or in relation to the crown program of political reform which derived inspiration from philosophes and government officials in France and Italy. Thus when the historian Jaume Caresmar referred in the 1780's to a cleric de algunas luces (literally "of some lights"), he drew upon the former sense of the literary trends which produced the Encyclopedia and other manifestations of the siecle des lumiéres. ⁽³³⁾ His praise, however, of the Madrid government's success in "dissipating darkness through the active rays of its luces" obviously referred to the royal program of "modernization from above" which sought to adapt to Spanish circumstances many of the slogans and policies of the Physiocrats. ⁽³⁴⁾Soon only one term could be employed unequivocally to signify the superior knowledge, refined behavior, and cultivation of intellect associated with the upper class. By the end of the eighteenth century, "culture" had triumphed over its rivals.

Late medieval Catalan use of the term cultura reflected classical notions of process and breeding. When Andreu Febrer in his fifteenth-century translation of the Inferno spoke of land "lying without cultura," or when the agronomist Miquel Agusti recommended in 1617 that "if your inheritance consists of uncultivated land, put it to cultura and you will make it good," they drew upon older traditions identifying "culture" with agricultural growth. ⁽³⁵⁾ Yet ancient writers had not limited usage of the term and its cognates to a strictly bucolic setting. Rather, they wielded "culture"--originally derived from colere, "to tend, till or adorn"--as a highly flexible metaphor for breeding and education[142]. The property of cultura distinguished civilized from barbarian, the polished and domesticated from the unbred and wild. Julius Caesar used the term in this way, for example, in his terse dismissal of the Belgians as lacking the cultu atque humanitate of the more Latinized Provençals. ⁽³⁶⁾ Closer to home, the cultura animi of Antiquity referred to the active perfection of the individual through formal study. In both its collective and individual applications, cultura denoted education and nurture--literally, the "cultivation" that set apart certain human beings from others. ⁽³⁷⁾

Despite the clear classical precedents for the use of "culture," few examples are found in Catalan literature prior to the early modern era. The most popular medieval Catalan pedagogical text, Lull's Doctrine for the Young, forsook "culture" for more Scholastic substantives like estudi, doctrina, and sciencia. The earliest local examples of "culture" in the classical sense date from the sixteenth century. Joan Boscá, for instance, occasionally used the words cultura, cultería, and culteridad in his 1534 translation of the Book of the Courtier. ⁽³⁸⁾ At the beginning of the following decade, a group of students at the University of Barcelona wrote to the city Councillors protesting the local Dominican onslaught on Erasmian teaching. They asked the magistrates

not to permit the introduction of such a great barbarity [Dominican control over the chairs of Philosophy], for afterwards no cultura or diligence will be able to extirpate these barbarous sophists raised on 'inhumane' letters. ... It would be a great misfortune for all if, just when God has blessed us to live when letters are being reborn, we should remain subject to ancient ignorance. . . , ⁽³⁹⁾

Cognates of the term also enjoyed growing popularity, beginning in the sixteenth century. Of special importance in the Hispanic context was the past participle culto (literally "cultured" or "cultivated"). ⁽⁴¹⁾ At least two meanings of this term can be isolated. First, culto (or culterano)referred to a Baroque literary style marked by a high level of metaphorical and stylistic complexity. Sebastián de Covarrubias, the dean of early modern Spanish lexicographers, sarcastically defined culto language as "a belabored manner of speaking 'cultivated' for the pulpit, worthy of the high and divine matters preached there, pleasing to the ear, honest and chaste, neither jarring nor excessive." ⁽⁴²⁾ Early modern Catalans also frequently used the term to denote highly conceited rhetoric. Thus D. Ramón de Salba's preface to the Cervera poem of 1637 showered effusive praise on its author's culto turns of phrase. A few years later a Sergeant Josep Doms [144] apologized ¡n the opening pages of his drill manual for the "curtness and poca cultura of its language." When in 1695 Joan Carles de Vilaplana recommended that his fellow preachers avoid lacónicos cultos, he was making obvious reference to oratory deemed too strained and sophisticated for the average congregation. And, as late as 1763, a local theologian approvingly dubbed Milton a poeta culto. ⁽⁴³⁾

The other usage of culto derived from the earlier, latinate sense of "culture" as the display of learning and aesthetic refinement. As the wrangling over culterana poetry died out in the later seventeenth century, cultura became firmly--even permanently--wedded to the accomplished fact of education and proper "taste." When the editors of a 1703 poetic anthology lauded the "culta and erudite" noble Academy of Barcelona, or when in 1753 Mercader praised the singular "erudition and cultura" of the Count of Peralada, they forged an unbreakable bond between "culture" and the visible body of acquired knowledge and behavior fostered by elite education. ⁽⁴⁴⁾Not surprisingly, the writer who most extensively explored the diverse facets of cultura was Gracián. In his Wit and the Art of Genius (revised edition, 1648), Gracián punned with at least two meanings of the term. For example, while criticizing the "culto style" of the poet Luis de Góngora, he noted that its partisans regarded "artificial" verse the most perfect, "as nature without art has always been inculta." ⁽⁴⁵⁾ And in The Discreet Man (1646), Gracián dropped his word-play to offer a positive alternative to the gongoristas. In a chapter entitled "Of Culture and Dressing (Aliño)" he extolled the civility and decorum of the Greeks and Romans, and called for their imitation by contemporary nobles, who should devote themselves to "gallantry, courtesy, discretion . . . and knowledge [145]." ⁽⁴⁶⁾ In these and other texts, Gracián chided the excesses of the culterantstas, while urging his compatriots to recover the true "culture" of the ancients. ⁽⁴⁷⁾ By driving a firm wedge between the two usages of cultura, he sped its transition from literary affectation to the conscious display of knowledge and refinement--in a word, from "mannered" to "manners."

Ingenio, luz, cultura--three words united by a shared meaning, each with its own nuances. The firmest tie binding these concepts was common service within the world-view of the learned elite. While a broad range of modifiers--discreet, prudent, grave, serene, gustoso, claro, curious, agudo--were used to describe the manners and comportment of the upper class, this triad won precedence as the leading terms of reference for the self-image of the patriciate.

One notes a clear progression in their usage. Tensions between inherent natural disposition and the attainment of knowledge through education had traditionally marked ruling-class claims to intellectual distinction. The early modern period witnessed a gradual shift away from the fixed ontology of innate "racial" characteristics embedded in the term "genius," toward a more flexible concept of "culture" which allowed greater room for its acquisition. As the pedagogue Diego de Gurrea noted, "proper breeding (crianza) has the power to change both nature and race." ⁽⁴⁸⁾ This opposition closely paralleled contemporary arguments regarding inherent versus acquired nobility. Not surprisingly, opportunities for the acquisition of "culture" increased with the improved social standing of the civic oligarchy and liberal professionals. Conversely, the more acceptance these strata found with the aristocracy, the more likely their argument for a[146] learned nobility would be adopted by all members of the urban ruling class.

The replacement of "genius" by "culture" was hardly the only significant semantic shift of the early modern period. In a remarkably similar fashion, giudizio--the innate faculty of discernment linked by writers like Persio to ingegno--gave way to gusto, or acquired "good taste." ⁽⁴⁹⁾ Yet few key words have experienced the linguistic success of cultura. The preeminence "culture" began to enjoy in the later seventeenth century bore witness to the striking durability of its underlying construct--the distinctive knowledge and behavior distinguishing rulers from ruled.

In the eyes of early modern elites, the "lower" classes served a variety of functions. Not least among these was that of an inverse or mirror reflection lending sharper focus to the self-image of the educated patriciate. A remarkably bipolar schema of cultural stratification matched clearly drawn lines of demarcation within the social sphere, as a rigidly symmetrical dichotomy opposed the special knowledge of the elite to the brutish "ignorance" and "superstition" of the vulgo. In the eyes of the ruling class, "culture" was not superimposed upon social inequality. Rather, the elite considered it an integral determinant of class differences, both informing and justifying their existence. The gradual replacement of the innate psychology of "genius" by a more overt emphasis on the acquisition of knowledge through schooling did not alter the elite's perception of other social classes as intellectually deficient. This distinction was now defined in terms of the "possession" or "lack" of cultura. Just as over the centuries a special lexicon had been devised to characterizes [147] the superior intellect and refined behavior of the nobility, in like manner learned "culture" gave birth to a distinctive vocabulary applied to the "lower" classes. The history of knowledge bore within itself a history of ignorance.

"Now do not imagine, sir, that by vulgar I mean only the common and humble people; for all who are ignorant, even if they are lords or princes, can rightfully be included under the name of vulgar." Thus Don Quijote informed D. Diego de Miranda, the village squire who took time off from his hunting and fishing to consult the six dozen books that gave him "honest entertainment." ⁽⁵⁰⁾ The "sagacity and good sense" that so delighted the knight errant's travelling companion centered around a concept of "vulgar ignorance" eminently familiar to ruling classes throughout early modern Europe, who inevitably contrasted gente popular e idiota--"popular and unlettered folk"-- with the "learned nobility." Rather than catalogue the innumerable examples of this usage, I would like briefly to note the principal characteristics of lower-class ignorance as defined by the educated elite.

Traditional opposition between city and country played an important role in the depiction of "vile ignorance." While the Barcelona ruling class claimed precedence, thanks to its "civility" and "urbanity," it predictably stigmatized social inferiors as "rustic" or "rude." When the anonymous author of the menacing Brief by the Captain of the Christian Army of peasants besieging the city in 1640 labelled his followers "rural and uncultivated people," or when the evangelist Francesch Baucells directed his proselytizing efforts toward the "ignorant and rustic illiterate," they merely followed longstanding patterns emphasizing the cultural deprivation of the countryside. ⁽⁵¹⁾

[148] In a similar vein, lower-class "ignorance" was often defined as a lack of familiarity with formal religious dogma. This usage evolved in at least two directions. First, there gradually coalesced a notion of popular "superstition," a term increasingly used to describe the syncretic and apparently pagan religious attitudes and practices of lower classes, both rural and urban. Thus, in the late fifteenth century, the local humanist Jeroni Pau referred to annual Midsummer's Day processions to a spring atop Montjuich mountain as an "old superstition ... of plebeian persons, yet to be abolished." More than a century later, Pere Gil, the rector of Barcelona's Jesuit college, drew upon the same association to defend women accused of witchcraft as "rude, simple, with little understanding . . . most of them poor, with little or no knowledge of Christian doctrine." And, in the eighteenth century, writers such as the reforming bishop Gavino Valladares continued to charge the lower classes with habitual misunderstanding or neglect of religious dogma. ⁽⁵²⁾ Yet popular disregard of elite theological conceptions also found another, more sinister interpretation. The "yoke of ignorance" enslaving the lower classes was often viewed, not as passive superstition, but as obstinate heresy. The introduction by Joan Joffreu, a prominent local barrister, to the 1628 reprinting of Pedro Ciruelo's treatise on witchcraft echoed this reading of popular knowledge and conduct. In the prologue, Joffreu made a remarkable confession, repenting of his former leniency as a magistrate in dealing with "heretics and supersticiosos." This opening passage set the tone for the interpretation of plebeian superstition as heresy sustained throughout the rest of the book. ⁽⁵³⁾

Another feature of elite commentaries on popular ignorance was the literalness with which descriptions of the lower classes [149] inverted the terms of noble self-depiction. This tendency was most evident in the obsessive manipulation of images of light and darkness. Identification of ignorance with dark "obscurity" was a common staple of learned characterizations of the plebs. ⁽⁵⁴⁾ Hence, for example, Gilabert's intriguing reference to the "clouds" of the mechanical arts, whose function was to render even brighter the "sun" of nobility. "It is honorable," he wrote, to possess "knowledge of the liberal arts, and even of the mechanical, for even if some of the latter are vile and infamous, they still through their verguença (shame) illumine the other, more noble ones, just as clouds make all the more beautiful the sun's rays shattering the darkness of their servitude. . . ." ⁽⁵⁵⁾ Contemporary onslaughts on lower-class festive life also echoed this association between popular ignorance and obscurity. Diego Pérez de Valdivia's Discourse on Masking attacked the Carnival celebrations of "low and vile persons" as a "time of shadows, an exercise of people who abhor the light." Similarly, the jurist Fructuoso Bisbe Vidal railed against theatregoers as "common and vulgar people" whose taste for "vulgar plays" could only be satisfied in the "dark cave of the Demon." And in a slightly less alarmist tone, the preface to Baucells' Mystic Fount spoke of the need for "shining" books of doctrine to "illumine with a hidden and pure light the shadows ... of the rude, vulgar, and ignorant." ⁽⁵⁶⁾

[150] A final characteristic of elite views of popular intellectual and moral debility was their frequent recourse to animal imagery to depict the lower classes. ⁽⁵⁷⁾ Once again one finds in Gilabert a remarkably frank statement of the power of knowledge to separate not just rulers and ruled but, even more fundamentally, men from beasts:

As David says, what is a man without knowledge but a horse or mule in whom there is no understanding? . . . One reads that one day Diogenes cried out from a high place, Come, men to me. As only popular and unlettered (ydiota) people gathered, he said with disdain, I call not for you, but for human beings . . . And Socrates affirmed that there is as much distance between learned and ignorant men as that which exists between men and beasts. . . . ⁽⁵⁸⁾

[151] the mule only in that he walks on two feet, whereas the mule walks on four." ⁽⁶⁰⁾

During the heated discussions at the Tarragona provincial synod of 1636 surrounding the issue of the use of Catalan in preaching, a local bishop noted that the more elegant Castilian language was not understood by those who most needed the teachings of Christian doctrine--"children, women, and ygnorants." ⁽⁶¹⁾ This phrase concisely evokes the mirror image through which the elite contrasted itself with those scorned as handicapped by innate mental immaturity or lack of knowledge. In the words of a 1661 Jesuit scholastic oration, "whoever looks at his reflection in a pool sees everything in reverse . . . even so we see high as low, right as left." ⁽⁶²⁾ Many of the features of early modern elite world-views--the passion for order and symmetry, obsession with the imagery of light and brilliance, the simplistic reductionism of their characterizations of subordinate classes-- owe much to this tendency to treat the universe as a mirror for upper-class lustre and display. Between the sun of knowledge and the moon of ignorance stood a world approached not directly, but darkly, as through a glass.

It is a delicious irony that the self-definition of patricians should rely so crucially upon their social inferiors. The elite's strikingly holistic vision of social hierarchy left no alternative to fixing the contours of its own image by distancing itself from the sphere of the "lower" classes. Prospero obviously could not exist without the physical labors of Caliban. Yet there was more to the problem [152] than that. Ultimately the master proved incapable of shaping a convincing self-portrait without staring in the mirror at the distorted reflection of his slave.

Up to this point elite systems of cultural classification have been presented solely in terms of their "social" function. In this capacity they served to define the composition and character of the nobility, while distinguishing upper from lower classes. However, the schema of cultural distinction also played a crucial "political" role. By assigning the parts of rulers and ruled to high and low, it furnished a fully articulated ideological justification of contemporary power structures. Social hierarchy and political domination were closely interwoven in a coherent pattern whose vital center was the doctrine of cultural differentiation

Gilabert's paraphrase of Aristotle's dictum that knowledge confers "power and seigneury" provides a convenient starting-point for discussion of the political dimensions of the ideology of cultura. As we have seen, early modern elites opposed the perceived intellectual and educational superiority of the nobility to a generic "lower" sphere characterized by ignorance and mental immaturity. At the base of this dichotomy lay an ontology identifying the plebeian order with animality and the sensual life of the material stratum, in contrast to the more refined, disembodied, and "elevated" nobility. Contested issues of class identity and public authority frequently shaped the confrontation of passion and reason so prevalent a theme in early modern literature and political discourse. ⁽⁶³⁾

In the eyes of most contemporary writers, passion or "appetite" had been the natural inclination of all men and women ab initio. According to Camós, Adam upset the "natural rectitude of man" which knew "no rebellion of the senses against reason, as the flesh obeyed the spirit and the superior presided over the inferior." By "despising and breaking the law of God," man "subjected the spirit to the flesh." Thus "he who was honored [153] as an angel came to be treated as a brutish animal." Other writers also attributed the victory of passion over inherent reason to the Fall. In the words of the barrister Joffreu, thanks to original sin "man's inclination is to covet what is prohibited," to seek a "liberty" that "drowns all understanding." In like manner, Bishop Valladares' late-eighteenth-century catechism linked teaching of Christian doctrine to the "creation of just men and obedient subjects" by "correcting their excessive passion" and instilling through discipline "a certain docility toward the good." ⁽⁶⁴⁾

The next step in the argument was an obvious one. According to this ontology, only those in control of their own inclinations could master the passions of others. Men and women incapable of curbing their own appetites became the passive objects of a political authority born of self-discipline and education. The internal control the elite imposed upon itself thus legitimated its rule over the rest of society. In this light, the close association between cultura and discipline took on new meaning. Pleas for the education of the aristocracy rested on the belief that only proper schooling could confer the self-control that determined the distribution of power between upper and lower classes. Delia Casa spoke for all nobles when he acknowledged that

However great the power of our natural inclinations may be, they are very often overcome and corrected by the rules of behavior. But we must start early to pit ourselves against them and repel them before they assert themselves and become too strong for us. So far from doing this, most people drift along without control, following wherever their instincts lead them. . . . ⁽⁶⁵⁾

[154] The same opposition between reason instilled through cultura and the natural indiscipline of the uneducated found expression in Sans's The Ignorant Wise Man. The point of departure of his eloquent exhortation to self-control was the familiar equation of passion with the body, and reason with the soul. The author then pleaded for a transfer of "law" and "justice" from the external to the internal sphere. "In this fashion," he argued, one can "contain the injustice of our appetites with the same luces of knowledge with which one brakes those inclinations in which sin has taken command. . . . Thus we render the soul subject like a vile serf to the far nobler and most excellent obedience of reason." ⁽⁶⁶⁾

The transparently political variables of control and rule stood at the crux of early modern elite views of the relations of different social classes to cultura. The theologian Juan Pineda's tripartite division of society into "governors, the governed, and the ungovernable" found a corollary in statements of the patriciate's desire to extend the control exercised over itself to other classes. Small wonder, then, that the "hero of virtue" of elite literature won rule over others by first dominating his own passions. In contrast to grossers Turks, subjects rather than masters of their "disordered appetites," the Christian warrior idealized in Joan Pujol's celebration of the battle of Lepanto was distinguished above all by the triumph of inner discipline over his own will. ⁽⁶⁷⁾

This construct could be superimposed with ease over a broad range of social relations. For example, association of women with irrationality and unbridled passion did much to reinforce the rigidly masculine character of authority. ⁽⁶⁸⁾ The criterion of self-control also determined contemporary formulae for tutelage of minors and the insane. Thus the royal decree of 1600 [155] transferring cura dementis of the honored citizen Pere Bernat Codina to a consortium of relatives rested on his being judged "unable to rule and govern himself and his goods." Members of the liberal professions also drew upon this distinction to enhance their position of intellectual and social domination. In his Treatise on Childbirth, the physician Josep Torner contrasted the razón of medical knowledge to the "passion" and sentido (literally "sense," "emotion") of "ignorant" midwives. Similarly, the jurist Vicent Domenech opposed the "reason" inherent in the barrister's ministration of the law to "litigants who, swept along by violent passion, do not recognize any superior authority save the powerful emotions dominating them." ⁽⁶⁹⁾

The cultural construct of the schema of reason versus passion found most explicit expression when applied to the "lower" classes. Frank assertions of the innate political incapacity of the "many-headed monster" were a standard feature of early modern elite discourse. ⁽⁷⁰⁾ Thus in the late fifteenth century Jeroni Pau noted that "some believe that the admission of the populace to municipal government in 1454 caused the ruin of our city. The plebs," he sniffed, "lack all aptitude for governing, because of their inexperience and their inability to agree on anything, because they are always prone to dissension, because they hate the nobility, and finally because they were made to be ruled rather than to rule." In the late 1620's Joffreu lamented the predilection of the ignorant and "superstitious" to throw off "the holy yoke and subjection man owes to God, much like a runaway horse without a bridle loses obedience. . . . From this disloyalty and disobedience are born rebellions against Princes . . . discord, revolts, and civil wars." Less than a decade later the preacher Gaspar Sala warned that unless vagabonds were shut away and lower-class children "indoctrinated in our schools," Barcelona [156] would suffer an "uprising like that Lyon witnessed in 1529." There was clearly a need for strong control by the elite; otherwise, he argued, "the bad customs of the vagabonds and their free way of speaking would be more quickly learned by our children than the instruction in letters and virtue given by their school teachers." ⁽⁷¹⁾

The cultural construct distinguishing learned nobility from ignorant lower classes played an important role in justifying existing social hierarchies. To the extent that knowledge was associated with reason, and appetite with popular ignorance, the paradigm also legitimated unequal distribution of political influence. Gilabert quite correctly insisted that learning conferred power. By his time knowledge was seen as an external authority absorbed through a rigorous program of study--of cultura in the strict sense of discipline. The upper classes enjoyed the good fortune of being able to acquire the "virtue of ruling" themselves. For those outside this reduced circle, however, control was destined to be exercised from without.

"No social phenomenon can be adequately studied merely in the language and categories of thought in which the people among whom it is found represent it to themselves." ⁽⁷²⁾ Social scientists never hesitate to state the obvious. All the same, I have tried in this chapter to present a systematic reading of some of the language which urban nobles used to mold their own self-image. Study of the social vocabulary of the elite constitutes a necessary prologue to the themes of this book's final chapters: the media of diffusion and forms of expression of ruling-class identity in early modern Barcelona. Genius, light, civility, ignorance, darkness-- all were "keywords" of a semantic of cultural distinction tailored

[157] to endow the urban patriciate with a sense of common purpose and identity. Its leading premise was the wedding of a static ideal of "culture" to nobilitas. Not surprisingly, the new collective vision of the elite found depiction in a wide variety of symbols and metaphors. These were in turn elaborated and disseminated by institutions of socialization and leisure like the Jesuit college and the noble Academy. Within their confines the governors of the city reproduced their values and beliefs, refined their comportment, and celebrated the privilege of defining their own identity.

1. Duby, "The Origins of a System of Social Classification," in Chivalrous Society, 88-93.

2. Don Quijote, II, 20.

3. W. H. Sewell, Jr. advocates studying the "linguistic postulates" of the Old Regime in his "État, Corps, and Ordre." See also: Sewell, Work and Revolution; Chisick, Limits to Reform, 48; Agulhon, Vie Sociale, 247-256; and Tournier, "Vocabulaire de la Revolution."

4. Ginzburg, "High and Low"; Payne, "Elite vs. Popular Mentality"; Wrightson, "Two Concepts of Order," 46.

5. Lovejoy, Essays in the History of Ideas, xiii.

6. For good general discussions of the idea of "culture," see the separate entries by Thomas Cole and Frederick M. Barnard in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, I, 607-621.

7. Hogden, Early Anthropology, Chapters 6 and 7; Moravia, Scienza dell'Uomo, II; Davis, Society and  Culture, 254-257.

8. Febvre, "Civilization"; Benveniste, "Civilisation"; Vivanti, "Origini dell'Idea di Civiltà"; Weintraub, Visions of Culture, Chapter i; Huppert, "Idea of Civilization"; Ryan, "Assimilating New Worlds."

9. A. L. Kroeber and C. Kluckhohn focus exclusively on the Germanic tradition and omit the earlier Latin background of the term in their Culture: A Critical Review.

10. This is true even of such revolutionary texts in intellectual history like Raymond Williams's Culture and Society 1780-1950. The same author's Keywords is an indispensable reference for the sort of linguistic history undertaken in this chapter.

11. Ripoll, Additiones, introduction.

12. The best catalogue of early modern usage is Giorgio Tonelli's entry in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, II, 293-297. See also: Rudolf Wittkower, "Genius: Individualism In Art and Artists," in ibid., 297-312; Nitzsche, Genius Figure; Panofsky, "Artist, Scientist, Genius"; and Kemp, "From Mimesis to Fantasia."

13. A.R.S.I./Arag. .10¹, Catalogi Triennales, 1587-1619, 41r.- 42r. (1593).

14. Cited in Molas, Economía i Societat, 39

15. Persio, Trattato dell'Ingegno; Garzoni, Tbeatro; Pellegrini, Fonti dell'Ingegno. Similar views are found  in Bartoli's L'Uomo di Lettere (English translation The Learned Man, 275-300). See also Raimondi, "Ingegno e Metafora nella Poetica del Tesauro," in his Letteratura Barocca, 1-32; and Summers, Michelangelo, 58.

16. Huarte de San Juan, Examen de Ingenios, 66-67. Richard Carew published the first English translation in London in 1594. See also Iriarte, Huarte de San Juan, and Read, Juan Huarte de San Juan.

17. Cortes, Els Setantí, 149; A.H.P.B./José Pedrol, Manual de Inventarios 1624-35 (29 Aug. 1629); B.C./Ms. 1960, untitled Nadal inventory (12 Aug. 1648); B.C./Ms. 677, untitled catalogue of Dalmases library (undated);A.E.B/Seminari IV, Inventari de ... la Biblioteca Pública Episcopal (1785).

18. Gurrea, Arte de Enseñar, Chapter 8.

19. Gracián, Obras Completas, clxi-clxvii and 1163-1254. To be sure, Pellegrini claimed to be the first to link ingegno and acutezze (Fonti dell'Ingegno, 21); see also Curtius, European Literature, 294-301.  Gracián and other seventeenth-century writers transposed Huarte's on of ingenio as "inclination" to the term genio: see the first chapter of El Discreto (1646) entitled "Genio y Ingenio" (Obras Completas, 78-81).

20. Iusta de Ingenios

21. Wittkower, "Genius"; Engell, Creative Imagination.

22. Capmany, Filosofía de la Eloquencia xiv-xv.

23. Prada, Increato Divinae Sapientiae, s.n.

24. Potau, Loa, A2 and A4

25. Rocabertí, Tratados Espirituales, II, "Palabras de La Autora."

26. Amat de Planella, Nenias Reales, "Aprobación."

27. For example, Romaguera, Atheneo de Grandesa, 59.

28. Valencià, untitled retirement petition of 1669 in B.C./F. Bon. 2596; Potau, Loa, final page; Mercader, Oración Fúnebre, 11.

29. Pujades, Dietari, III, 93; Bosch, Títols, 579.

30. Untitled pamphlet in B.C./F. Bon. 323, 17; A.H.M.B./Ms. B-98, session of 22 July 1700; Dalmases, Disertación Histórica, prefaces.

31. Montfar, Diario, in B.U.B./Ms. 397, 27 March 1685; Parets, "Sucesos," vol. 20, 50.

32. Tagell, Descripció dels Dotze Celebres Festins (1720), in B.U.B./Ms. 5, I4V., I8r., 22r., and 24V.

33. Galí, Molda, 282.

34. Cited in Arranz, "Profesionales," I, 10. See also in general Sarrailh, L'Espagne Éclairée, II and III

35. Febrer, Infern, XX, 84; and Agusti, Llibre de Secrets, 140v., cited in Alcover, Diccionari Catalá-Valencia -Balear, III, 845.

36. De Bello Gallico, I, I.

37. Marrou, Education In Antiquity, 21-34 and 137- 146; Williams, Keywords, 76.

38. At one point Boscá substituted for "culture" buen granjear (literally, "good acquisition" or "profit"): Morreale, Castiglione y Bascán, II, 70.

39. Epistolari del Renaixement, II, 76.

40. Gilabert, Discurso, 7r. His source was the Tusculan Disputations, II, 5, 13.

41. According to Coraminas, the earliest usage of culto in Castilian (1377) was as a noun, denoting devotion or a liturgical act: see his Diccionario Crítico Etimológico, I, 980.

42. Covarrubias, Tesoro, 386-387. For some lucid remarks on the culterano phenomenon, see Russell,  Spain: A Companion, 316-319.

43. Cervera, Grave Ostentación, 2V.; Doms, Orde de Batalla, introductory epistle; Vilaplana, Discurso  Panegírico, "aprobación"; Sans, Sabio Ignorante, I, 18.

44. Armonía del Parnàs, introduction; Mercader, Oración Fúnebre,

45. Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio (Huesca, 1648), Discourse 62 (Obras Completas, 506-512).

46. El Discreto, chap. 18 (Obras Completas, 129).

47. Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio, Discourse 01 (Obras completas, 499-504).

48. Gurrea, Arte de Enseñar, 3r.

49. Curtius, European Literature, 297; Klein, Form and Meaning, chap. 9. 

50. Don Quijote, II, 16. I have used the English translation by J. M. Cohén (Harmondsworth, 1972), 566 and 570.

51. Memorial de lo Capità General del Exèrcit Christia (1640), in B.C./F. Bon. 6139; Baucells, Font mystica, "aprobación." Equally typical was a rural priest's reference to his parishioners as persones idiotas: Processo de Fé Contra el Ermitaño de San Bartolomé ... de Solsona, 12 Oct. 1642 (A.H.M.B./C-XVIII, Clero/Inquisición, leg. 9, s.n.). See also Richter, "Urbanitas-Rusticitas," and Ramage, Urbanitas.

52. Pau, Barcino, 52; Memorial de Pedro Gil . . . en Defensa de la Bruxas (1619) in B.U.B./Ms. 1008; and  Valladares, Promptuari, "Advertencia."

53. Ciruelo, Supersticiones, prologue by Dr. Joan Joffreu.

54. One could cite countless instances of this usage. For example, Shakespeare drew upon this association in:  The Winter's Tale, IV, 4; The Tempest, V, i; Twelfth Night, IV, 2; and I Henry IV, I, 2. For the links between  darkness and ignorance, see Panofsky and Panofsky, Pandora's Box, 39-40 and 149-150.

55. Gilabert, Discurso, 12r. This passage was taken without attribution from Tommaso Garzoni's Piazza Universale  di tutu le Scienze (Venice, 1589), 30, from which Gilabert pilfered with abandon.

56. Pérez de Valdivia, Plática, prologue and 23v. (originally preached in 1583); Bisbe Vidal, Tratado de las  Comedias, 2r. and dedication; Baucells, Font Mystica, aprobaciones." Passages such as these drew heavily  on the traditional Christian association of theological ignorance and heresy with darkness(see e.g., Ephesians 4:17-18).

57. Hill, "Many-Headed Monster." M. Bakhtin has explored the link between the populace and the "material bodily  stratum" in his Rabelais.

58. Gilabert, Discurso, 9v. The passage attributed to David is from Psalms 31: 8-9 (Vulgate).

59. Sans, Sabio Ignorante, I, 8.

60. Camós, Microcosmia, 218-220; A. S. Piccolomini, Epístola IV, cited in Sans, Sabio Ignorante, I, 8.  Richelieu employed this simile in a famous passage in his Political Testament, 31. See also La Bruyère, Oeuvres, II, 61.

61. Cited in García Cárcel and Nicolau, "Castella contra Catalunya," 45.

62. Bru, Oración, s.n.

63. Hirschman, Passions and the Interests, I; Elias, Court Society, 110-114.

64. Camós, Microcosmia, 222-223; Ciruelo, Supersticiones, prologue; Valladares, Promptuari, "Advertencia."

65. Delia Casa, Galateo, Chapter 25 (Pine-Coffin translation, 57).

66. Sans, Sabio Ignorante, II, 172-173.

67. Pineda, Diálogos Familiares, vol. 161, 76-78; Pujol, Obra Poètica, 7-8.

68. Davis, "Women on Top," in her Society and Culture, Chapter 5; Pomata, In Scienza e Coscienza.

69. A.C.A./Can., reg. 4886, 106r.; J. Torner, Tratado de Partos, undated manuscript (ca. 1720?) in A.H.M.B./Ms. 166; Domenech, Discurso, 26.

70. Hill, "Many-Headed Monster"; Sewell, Work and Revolution, 74; Chisick, Limits to Reform.

71. Pau, Barcino, 36; Ciruelo, Supersticiones, introduction; Sala, Govern Politich, 7r., 8v., and 11r.

72. Lienhardt, Social Anthropology, 123.