[181] "In Spanish as in every other language . . . there is a great difference between fine speech and common speech." In his Discourse on the Castilian Language (1586), the humanist Ambrosio de Morales reproduced a fundamental tenet of earlier treatises on noble conduct like the Book of the Courtier and the Galateo. ⁽¹⁾ Uniting these arguments was a belief in the power of speech to distinguish the "vulgar" from "noble men of letters." The "civil conversation" of the educated noble evidenced itself not only in the content of his address but also in its form. Both the vocabulary and modes of expression deemed appropriate for elite usage conferred glittering badges of class identity.

That all discourse could be divided into "vulgar" or "learned" proved a durable commonplace of early modern literary commentary. Book prefaces in particular habitually distinguished patterns of address along the lines of social class. The Catalan preacher Francesch Eiximenis began his fourteenth-century Crestiá with an apology for its "simple and rude (grossera) style . . . for although this book can be of service to knowledgeable and learned persons, I nevertheless intend to speak principally [182]  to simple laymen without great learning." Two centuries later Diego Pérez de Valdivia vowed at the outset of his harangue against Barcelona's Carnival revelry not to treat the matter "in a metaphysical way, for such would be indiscreet, because the common people (pueblo) would not understand . . . rather we must talk in a plain style (llanamente)" A contemporary Valencian cleric apologized in 1586 for his

simple style ... as one must perforce use in dealing with simple Christians. For this reason I beg the learned reader not to seek in this work curiosidad, nor ornate style, nor exquisite vocabulary, nor polished Castilian language, for such . . . curious style . . . was never my intent. . . .

The same framework linking discrete literary styles to different social classes informed the prologue to Rocaberti's Fatal Omens of 1646. In this windy passage Rius praised the noble author's

great erudition, beautifully composed of learned maxims, choice sayings, proper exempla, and sound doctrine approved by classical authors, written not in a vulgar style, but rather with the gravity befitting its matter and language. . . .

A common vision unites these passages. Their coherence derives from shared perception of the need to adjust modes of literary presentation to the social background of individual audiences. More significantly, the separation between the learned manner of the elite and the "vulgar" or "rude" style of the lower classes--satirized with disarming irony by Cervantes in the prologue to Don Quijote--exercised considerable influence upon the nature of early modern elite discourse itself. Conscious recognition of the power of style to express social distinctions was the product of an era witnessing significant transformations in the composition and functions of the urban ruling class and in public representations of elite identity. Awareness of the social valence of learned "culture" contributed to the flourishing of a highly mannered literary style which drew heavily upon the themes and figurae of classical Antiquity. Sentences like the following typified the wedding of "artificial Gymnastics" and "conceited Cadences" with "most sublime" pedantry:

If a simple little bird scaling spheres towered above the palaces of the stars, wishing to establish its home near [184] the rays of the Sun, in order to usurp from the Eagle the diadem which the latter so justly enjoys as the Queen of the entire Realm of Flight (República volante), who would be surprised if it fell like the unfortunate Phaeton into the cold waves of the Eridanus, in the craggy roughness of the deep valley, as a punishment for its daring zeal and blind ambition . . . ? ⁽⁵⁾

The direct link between social standing and a taste for artifice and erudition also helps explain contemporary interest in the esoteric and hermetic. The ever-popular emblem books, the use of hieroglyphics in elite ceremonial, and the bizarries Academicians cultivated in their published poetry (which often included acrostics and inverted letter patterns) drew nourishment from this penchant for the inaccessible (see Illustration 5). The Janus-like quality of such literary forms found expression in the laying of an external, literal face directed toward public display over an internal, deeper level of significance. Only a select few could penetrate the latter sphere--a veritable Silenus-box of social distinction. Classical allegory and Baroque flourish joined to erect a "veil of mystery" excluding all but the initiated from the most recondite and profound meaning. ⁽⁶⁾

[185] 

Public cultivation of erudition and stylistic obscurity was not ¡n itself sufficient to define class boundaries. Upper-class education also sought to endow students with an autonomous capacity for judgment and selection--one that permitted them to detect and confirm patterns of social hierarchy in more personal, less ostentatious ways. Indoctrination in the principles of tacit discernment thus involved deliberate promotion of the qualities of "discretion" and "subtlety." An intriguing passage in a 1674 legal treatise developed the opposition between literalness, "common to all the vulgo," and sutileza (subtlety) of interpretation, which "discovers the ambiguous and hidden, expounding what lays beneath the letter of the law." In dedicating his book to the noble D. Jeroni de Pinós, the local cleric Joan Pujol expressed a similar hope: that such a "prudent reader" would "subtly separate the wheat from the chaff by "going beyond the letter and penetrating the marrow" of the text. ⁽⁷⁾

[184] Construction of elite knowledge as recondite, esoteric, requiring interpretation--in short, accessible to only a select few-- also underlay the public ceremonies of the Cordelles school. A text published in 1696 explained their constant resort to "ingenious devices" and hieroglyphics, which even included competitive exegesis of Alciati's Emblems. In that year, the Jesuits mounted in Barcelona's Plaça del Rei a "vivid hieroglyph" to celebrate one of Charles II's many restorations to health. A host of statues, altars, sacred texts, and other pictorial and sculptural elements adorned this "expressive emblem." "Its coats-of-arms," according to a contemporary account, "were made intelligible to all by means of written poems, thus reserving understanding of the mute language of their emblems to only the erudite." ⁽⁸⁾ Opposition between the superficial, literalistic perception of the masses and the deeper, interpretative faculty restricted to the elite provided a coherent framework of differential understanding and perception. Ironically, the 1696 text reversed the longstanding identification of visual images with the lower classes. Early modern writers had long distinguished the written media of "learned persons" from the exclusively visual and oral means of communication of the "ignorant, needy, and vulgar." Theologians also dwelt on this dichotomy. While reserving the privilege of reading scripture to the elite, they encouraged popular devotion through sermons, sacred images, and the collective recitation of prayers. ⁽⁹⁾ The Jesuit fête of 1696 thus provides an interesting twist, as there the strictly visual element (in this case emblems) proved hardest to decipher.

I am not arguing that all developments in literary style from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries originated in a conscious desire to manipulate learned "culture" as an instrument for defining class boundaries. Relations between text and context are never that simple, nor so obsessively uni-directional. Moreover, [187] early modern elite discourse was scarcely of one mind on the issue of literary artifice and classical allusion. For example, religious reformers like the earlier followers of Erasmus strongly advocated a "plain," vernacular style in devotional rhetoric. Their goal was in fact to lower class barriers, at least in the religious sphere, in order to expand familiarity with the gospel. ⁽¹⁰⁾ And while manuals of comportment such as the Book of the Courtier and the Galateo insisted upon the need to avoid recognizably "popular" forms of speech, they condemned excessive mannerism in equally harsh terms. In the words of Castiglione, the true courtier shuns affectation, an error which stems "from an excessive desire to appear very accomplished." Rather, the educated noble should attempt to "conceal all art, and to make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort." ⁽¹¹⁾

Early modern Spanish authors engaged in bitter polemics over the highly artificial rhetoric of much contemporary literature, especially poetry. In the late sixteenth century, for instance, Sebastián de Covarrubias ridiculed the "mad excesses" of culterano preachers. Writers of the stature of Quevedo and Calderón joined the fray by lambasting the affected style of their opponents. ⁽¹²⁾ However, the impassioned disputes pitting culterano against conceptista writers only partly defined the terms of this exchange. Viewed from a more general perspective, the two styles can be seen to share a common emphasis on obscurity, impenetrability, and metaphorical complexity. Once again, Gracián loomed large in this debate. A measured ambivalence permitted him to draw upon and at times blend together both stylistic traditions. At the same time, in works like The Discreet One and especially the Criticón, he showed considerable sensitivity to [188] the social and political implications of the elite's choice of literary style and illustrative figurae.

Criticism of Baroque "excess"--limited at first to a small minority of writers--increased with the passage of time. Eighteenth-century savants excoriated the "sect of false doctors" who emphasized the superfluous over the useful and prized witty conceits over the "simple style of virtue." ⁽¹³⁾ Capmany's Philosophy of Eloquence (1777) constituted the most sustained attack on literary affectation by an eighteenth-century Catalan author. In his fervent defense of neo-classical aesthetics, Capmany chastised those writers who "make themselves obscure in order to seem profound," and whose "overladen sentences" and "sharp subtleties" contributed to the "puerile attempt to make things appear more ingenious than they are" so that "their delicacy is not perceptible to all." ⁽¹⁴⁾ In the eyes of Capmany and fellow sympathizers like Jovellanos, elite cultura had erected a "wall of separation" between "those who study and those who work." The duty of enlightened reformers was thus to foster a "plain style" facilitating access to public discourse and luces by those sectors of the populace hitherto excluded by "literary pride." ⁽¹⁵⁾

In short, early modern Spanish views on proper literary style were far from uniform. In fact, by the mid-eighteenth century, an interesting reversal had taken place. The ornamentation and artifice originally cultivated to distinguish members of the upper class were now condemned as the vulgar opportunism of parvenus. Criticism of such rhetoric by the defenders of "plain style" provides interesting evidence for the earlier ties linking "ingenious" modes of expression with membership in the elite. For example, in the mid-seventeenth century the famed Italian Jesuit Daniello Bartoli attributed the conceits of the "contrivers of crooked labyrinths" to the

[189] received opinion among the vulgar, that all Obscurity is an argument of Wit, and the mark of the loftiness of a great Understanding . . . that Nature hath given the stars to the Obscurity of the night, and wisdom to the Obscurity of wits . . . thus the vulgar, deluded by the false appearance of truth, always most admire what they least understand. . . . ⁽¹⁶⁾

That contemporaries attributed rhetorical excess to social pretension suggests that particular literary styles constituted specific cultural representations of class identity. The premium placed upon ostentation and adornment coincided with a significant change in the world-view of the urban ruling class. The public display of "ingenious conceit" so assiduously cultivated in elite education bore close relation to the emerging self-image of the learned nobility. To be sure, the notion of a separate elite cultura set in opposition to popular ignorance hardly disappeared with the triumph of neo-classical aesthetics. The previous era had nevertheless witnessed an especially intimate bond between social change and modes of literary expression. Adoption of a uniquely complex and artificial rhetoric facilitated the public  [190] depiction of nobles as men of "genius" and "discretion." The external projection of this self-image through specific literary styles shaped both the forms and content of aristocratic identity, and marked the boundaries of the world it inhabited.

Linguistic preference also provided a crucial test of social standing in early modern Barcelona. As early as the sixteenth century, writers like Cristófol Despuig lamented the increasing use of Castilian by the local ruling class. A generation later the Jesuit Pere Gil claimed that Spanish was understood by all local males save in those towns not located on main travel routes and in the countryside. These and other texts bore witness to the growing use of Castilian by the "principal nobles and gentry" and the corresponding limitation of Catalan to "the common people and . . . women." ⁽¹⁸⁾

Symbolizing the pressures placed on Catalan writers was the switch made by the jurist and historian Jeroni Pujades in the later volumes of his Chronicle of Catalonia. After publishing the first tome in Catalan in 1609, Pujades--never one to muffle his strident anti-Castilian sentiments--felt compelled to write the rest of the work in Spanish, "for the sake of universal understanding." His fellow barrister Narcís Peralta, in a protectionist trade pamphlet of 1620, offered the same excuse for writing in Castilian. "Our [Catalan] language is not understood outside the Principality," he argued. The hope for wider circulation of his arguments thus justified abandoning the native tongue. Even loyal defenders of the use of Catalan like Andreu Bosch admitted they were fighting a losing battle. "I must disagree," he wrote,

[191] "with what is commonly said of the Catalan tongue, that it is sterile, curt, and sounds badly, while others like Latin and Castilian . . . are abundant, fertile, and sonorous." Framing the debate in these terms obviously placed the dwindling number of elite users of Catalan on the defensive. ⁽¹⁹⁾

The revolt of 1640-1652 constituted a watershed in the linguistic sphere, as in so many others. The intense pamphleteering for the constitutional cause during that decade proved a "last gasp" for published secular discourse in Catalan. Comparison of the language choice of works penned in the 1640's with the propaganda efforts of the War of Spanish Succession renders the contrast especially clear. ⁽²⁰⁾ The earlier period witnessed not only the publication of numerous political tracts in Catalan, but also the singular initiative of the poet Francesch Fontanella, who attempted to revive imaginative literature in that language. A mere six decades later, virtually all the publications of the Catalan cause were printed in Spanish, as were the works of major Catalan apologists like Narcís Feliu de la Penya. Even D. Pau Ignasi de Dalmases wrote the diary of his ill-fated mission to seek English aid in the final months of the war in Castilian. ⁽²¹⁾

Several factors encouraged the Castilianization of the urban elite. First, the higher reaches of the Catalan aristocracy, especially the peerage, had already become effectively Castilianized by the later sixteenth century. Families like the Requesens, Cardona, and Montcada had already emigrated from the Principality. In fact, when D. Francesch de Montcada returned to Barcelona as viceroy in 1580, he chose to address his fellow countrymen in Spanish, not in Catalan. ⁽²²⁾ The behavior of the [192] titled nobility exercised an important exemplary influence upon the rest of the civic elite. In fact, one could characterize the trend of the seventeenth century as an incremental filtering-down to the patriciate of the cultural models emanating from the Castilian court and nobility via the Catalan peerage. ⁽²³⁾ The acceleration of this tendency following the revolt of the 1640's represented merely the final stage in a process initiated at least a century earlier.

Language decisions in the field of literary expression also influenced the preferences of Barcelona's elite. The early modern period witnessed a drift on the part of Catalan writers toward the Castilian orbit. The honored citizen Joan Boscá pioneered the transition in the mid-sixteenth century. Service as tutor to Castilian aristocrats like the Albas and the development of close ties to the Spanish writer Garcilaso de la Vega led to the exclusive use of Castilian in his writings. ⁽²⁴⁾Other Catalan authors quickly followed suit. Guillem de Santcliment, also an honored citizen of Barcelona, had little use for his native language during his many years in the diplomatic service. And Galceran de Albanell, royal tutor and later Archbishop of Granada, similarly abandoned Catalan after taking up crown and ecclesiastic service outside the Principality.

The growing importance of Jesuit education also favored the Castilianization of the local ruling class. At first, the Society adopted a flexible attitude toward the use of the vernacular. Portions of the order's early internal correspondence were written in Catalan, although this practice was discontinued by the end of the sixteenth century. A report from a 1596 visitation of the Barcelona collegium also included an interesting defense of the use of Catalan in preaching and, to a certain extent, in education. ⁽²⁵⁾ [193] Its rector, Pere Gil, proved a staunch defender of the local language and used it in several of his published works, such as a 1596 guide for pastoral reform written for the diocese of Barcelona. ⁽²⁶⁾ And as late as the 1690's, Jesuit missionaries preached in Catalan not only in the countryside but also in larger cities like Girona. ⁽²⁷⁾

Still, by the mid-seventeenth century, Jesuit language usage had swung decidedly in favor of Castilian. Beginning in the neo-foral period, the Society--which had adopted a fairly equivocal posture during the revolt of 1640-1652--began to champion the Spanish tongue. All the Cordelles orations, which were published beginning in the 1660's, were delivered in either Castilian or Latin, as were most of the speeches and oral exercises of the annual poéticas fiestas.On the few occasions when the use of Catalan was permitted, it was limited strictly to comic literary forms such as "burlesque glosses" and "satires." The Order's strong stand in favor of the Castilian cause in the War of Spanish Succession assured it a leading role in the Castilianization of the Barcelona elite during the eighteenth century. The Cordelles ordinances of 1763 permitted students to speak only Latin and Castilian. Practice in the latter was especially encouraged because, according to these guidelines, Catalans found it difficult to pronounce Spanish correctly! ⁽²⁸⁾

Crucial to the elite's adoption of Castilian was the identification of the Catalan vernacular with the "lower" classes. In this case, as in others, the use of specific cultural norms to indicate social status rested upon the perceived "limitations" of the masses. If the lower classes were restricted to the use of Catalan, those wishing to distinguish themselves as patricians were  [194] perforce obliged to use Castilian and/or Latin as well. The ruling class apparently did not always regard familiarity with Catalan as demeaning. However, it firmly associated exclusive use of that language with the plebeian order. Hence the continual apologies for the use of Catalan, typified by the remark of a group of physicians who begged forgiveness for writing "in such a vulgar language, which every type of person can understand." ⁽²⁹⁾ The association of Catalan with "lower" matters that characterized Jesuit exercises also found a corollary in the practice of the Academy of the Desconfiats. Of the handful of orations delivered in Catalan within this important forum of aristocratic learning, almost all dealt with "burlesque" or "ridiculous" themes. ⁽³⁰⁾ Well might Josep Romaguera complain in 1681 of the universal disregard in which contemporaries held the vernacular. Where in other nations there is praise of the native tongue, here there is naught but disdain: "Just because the language is vulgar does not mean that its style must be vulgar . . . only our nation [Catalonia] despises such glory in its geniuses." Romaguera concluded with a vow to write two more works in Catalan. He further promised that "if  I experience the usual disdain, I will bury them in the ground." Apparently this is what happened. His emblem book turned out to be virtually the last work of learned lay discourse published in Catalan until the renaixença of the nineteenth century. ⁽³¹⁾

Languages made prestigious by their literary weight and/or through association with central political authority triumphed throughout early modern Europe. ⁽³²⁾ Linguistic preference consti-[195] tuted an arena wherein members of local ruling classes could garner additional emblems of social distinction. While the range of language choice did not preclude bilingualism, urban elites almost always reserved participation in native dialects and languages to informal, festive, or private venues. Within the Iberian peninsula, Valencia in particular exemplified the precocious Castilianization of a Catalan-speaking civic elite. As such, it provided an important model for Barcelona. Moreover, the establishment there of a Castilian-speaking court during the early decades of the sixteenth century lent added impetus to elite abandonment of Catalan. Writers like Joan Fernández de Heredia relegated Catalan to comic uses, like the theatrical mimicry of women's gossip. ⁽³³⁾ In so doing he merely transferred to the stage the sentiments already expressed by Valencia's ruler Germana de Foix (1488-1538). "Doña Hierónima," she asked her maid-in-waiting, "I would like you always to speak in Catalan, which in your mouth sounds so funny (gracioso)." ⁽³⁴⁾ Banished by the civic elite to the lower depths of the burlesque, Catalan had to wait two centuries for its reprieve.

The means through which nobles distinguished themselves from commoners were hardly limited to the adoption of separate languages or literary styles. To the contrary, these norms embraced areas as diverse as dress, gestures, bodily comportment, and almost all activities susceptible to public display. One of the most significant developments of the early modern era was the definitive consolidation of a separate "style of life" identified exclusively [196]  with the governing elite. The creation of this world apart was made especially apparent in the changing nature of aristocratic participation in civic ritual. Urban notables increasingly separated themselves from the traditional festive life of the city. They transposed fulfillment of the social imperative of noble pomp and magnificence from the public sphere to private or semi-private venues like the aristocratic palace. Direct participation in communal ceremonies gave way to observation, as the ruling class abandoned the street in favor of the balconies and inner salons of its mansions. ⁽³⁵⁾

The contrast between municipal fêtes at the beginning and end of the early modern period is instructive. Late medieval Barcelona housed a seemingly endless round of secular and religious rituals. The city garnered special fame for three high points in its festive calendar: Carnival, Holy Week, and Corpus Christi. Barcelona also hosted a variety of public celebrations rooted in the political structures and traditions of its municipal and national governments. Prominent among these were the processions and inaugural ceremonies involving the city Council and the Deputies of the Generalitat. Finally, Barcelona was one of the few cities in the peninsula with a longstanding tradition of royal pageantry. The most important regal ceremonies were the king's entries, his swearing of an oath to the national constitution, and the solemn convocation of parliament. ⁽³⁶⁾

By the eighteenth century a strikingly different pattern had supplanted the earlier ceremonial tradition. Among the many changes was, as one might expect, the disappearance of holidays linked to the municipal Council and the Generalitat, which the victorious Castilian government abolished in 1714. Ceremonies [197] honoring the new Bourbon monarchs replaced political celebrations like the investiture of the city magistrates and the votive procession commemorating the Catalan victory at Montjuich (1641). Such entertainments, while public in character, recruited their participants exclusively among local notables or "people of distinction." Precedents for this type of fête dated back to the mid-sixteenth century, when the Bras Militar and Confraternity of St. George established special holidays reserved to members of the aristocracy. The most famous of these were the annual jousts held in the Born square on April 23, the day of the nobility's patron, St. George; and the votive procession of the Invention of the Holy Cross (May 3) when the Bras elected its officers. ⁽³⁷⁾ Such displays also harkened back to the tradition of special encamisades, or masques that aristocrats put on during the visits of royalty and other dignitaries. A high degree of theatricality pervaded these noble entertainments. The minutes of the St. George tourneys in particular betray a growing awareness of the public attending the festes. ⁽³⁸⁾ Contemporary descriptions reflect a remarkable self-consciousness within elite festivities, as in the account of the 1653 Carnival that stated that local "knights promenaded through the streets so that the populace might see them." ⁽³⁹⁾ It is hard to determine both the numbers and identity of the spectators of these semi-public entertainments. Still, the exceptionally detailed descriptions of aristocratic fêtes in the diary of the tanner Miquel Parets reveal that members of the "lower" classes enjoyed access not only to the processions but to the masques as well.

Another transformation in the city's festive life was the appearance during the intervening period of public entertainments [198] for which admission was charged, and which often involved professional performers. Most important in this regard was the establishment in the 1590's of a permanent professional theatre on the Rambla. By the eighteenth century, the Teatre de Santa Creu (Theatre of the Holy Cross) also housed the growing local enthusiasm for Italian opera. At the same time, outdoor sports increased in popularity. Bullfighting in particular was regularly scheduled in annual seasons beginning in the mid-eighteenth century. Another innovation dating from these years was the public sarau, or indoor celebration, usually scheduled at Shrovetide. The government sponsored these balls in the municipal theatre, or in the Llotja or Merchant Consulate opposite the civil administrative offices. ⁽⁴⁰⁾

The single most important development affecting elite participation in public life was its retreat to the private sphere of the noble palace. While some notables could be found at public masked balls, by the end of the early modern period aristocratic diversions had shifted to more hermetic and controlled venues. The patricians' withdrawal from the earlier mixed, public festive tradition apparently began in the sixteenth century. The chronology of this trend reveals itself most clearly in the case of Barcelona's Carnival.

The earliest references to separate Carnival festivities involving nobles date to the closing years of the sixteenth century. The Andalusian preacher Diego Pérez de Valdivia chastised those who defended special Carnivals for members of "the equestrian order, who claim that they put them on solely for recreation." A generation later, Thomas Platter's lengthy description of the Barcelona Carnival of 1599 singled out Sunday, February 21, as "the day of the Carnival of the Nobles." In 1604, Pujades remarked that "on March 25, Lard Thursday (dijous llarder), the [199] viceroy gave a dinner party for the noblewomen of the city, which was a most splendid thing. And all throughout this Carnival there have been mounted festas, and never has such invention been seen as that devised by the gentry this year." The resort to a separate Carnival composed exclusively of ruling-class participants continued throughout the seventeenth century. Especially memorable were the celebrations of 1630 and 1633, both of which coincided with the entry into the city of members of the royal family. The municipal elite sponsored equally luxurious entertainments during the revolutionary decade of the 16405. These lengthy festivities included a momería or masque in 1644 curiously entitled a "The Revolution of the Century," wherein visiting French nobles strutted before an audience of several thousand spectators. ⁽⁴¹⁾

In 1720 the cleric Francesch Tagell penned the most detailed account of an aristocratic Carnival in early modern Barcelona. This unusual work, entitled Description of Twelve Celebrated Balls, recounted the highlights of a dozen saraus or parties held in various mansions on "the most noble street of the entire city," the Carrer de Montcada. Each of the fêtes followed a standard pattern which began with conversation accompanied by the serving of hot chocolate--a new stimulant introduced during the expansion of the colonial trade in the seventeenth century (see Illustration 6). A round of genteel dances brought on the next stage, which professional players hired for the occasion, closed with a short mime or scene from a Castilian comedia. After a final cotillion, which included allemandes, minuets, and the Catalan sardana, the party concluded with a mock invitation to the sarau of the following day, usually held in a neighboring palace. At the end of the last evening, an actor impersonating Carnival himself read aloud a parody of his testament and expressed the wish [201] that "everyone so well diverted can now hope to enjoy the coming season of Lent." ⁽⁴²⁾ 

[200]  

The creation of this separate sphere of entertainment was not without its effect upon communal ceremonies involving a broader range of participants. These included not only Carnival, but also patron saint's days, Holy Week, and Corpus Christi. Ironically, an increase in the prior organization of Barcelona's festive life accompanied the withdrawal of the elite. As early as the opening decades of the seventeenth century, professional writers devised scripts for local processions and parades. The structuring of the 1633 Carnival around a program based on the novel Don Quijote symbolized the imposition of a fixed schema derived from humanist cultura.Sponsors arranged the floats, [202] bearing costumed figures from novels of chivalric romance along with legends in Catalan and Castilian, according to an elaborate predetermined scenario." ⁽⁴⁵⁾

Increased regulation of public ceremonies also accompanied the growing resort to written scripts. As these entertainments became more "popular" in character, bureaucratic attempts to control festive life intensified. During the second half of the eighteenth century, fear of repetition of the widespread disturbances of 1766 led to the exercise of severe vigilance over these parades. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ Measures adopted by the government to improve supervision over the crowd included the suspension of Carnival beginning in 1767, the abolition of Holy Week processions in 1770, and a strict ban on all public gatherings after nightfall. It is also likely that the well-known royal ban on autos sacramentales, or eucharistic plays, reflected not just enlightened disdain of these instances of Baroque religiosity, but also fear of the popular license that accompanied their presentation.

Barcelona was not the only city subjected to repressive legislation of this sort. All across Europe, the concern for "decorum" pervading the world-view of the ruling class joined with the central government's fear of political unrest to produce attempts to control the more spontaneous and potentially disruptive festive life of the subaltern classes. ⁽⁴⁷⁾ In the specific case of Barcelona, while the local elite avoided direct involvement in an expanding range of spectacles and processions, the central  [203] government exercised and even increased its control over public fêtes. Not surprisingly, one finds a growing emphasis on hierarchy and separation within the celebrations in which the local ruling class continued to participate. As early as the fifteenth century, the Barcelona aristocracy had won for itself a highly privileged corporate position in the Corpus Christi parade. During the eighteenth century, local officials encouraged extension of this hieratic configuration to other pageants. Especially symbolic were the Holy Week penitential processions on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, in which the nobility marched as a separate body under the banner of the largely aristocratic--and aptly named--Confraternity of Solitude. ⁽⁴⁸⁾

Changing patterns of membership in devotional confraternities also reflected the growing distance between Barcelona's ruling class and its social "inferiors." By the eighteenth century, a small number of religious brotherhoods had shed their formerly broad social composition in favor of predominantly aristocratic membership. To be sure, devotional confraternities usually maintained the general principle of inter-class sociability. Marching alongside plebeians was an act of humiliation that penitent nobles willingly suffered. Still, a widening gap separated visibly elite brotherhoods like the Congregations of Good Death, of Sorrows, and of Solitude from the mass fellowships of the Rosary and St. Francis sponsored by the Mendicant orders. ⁽⁴⁹⁾ Once again, the experience of Barcelona paralleled trends found in much of the rest of Mediterranean Europe, where urban patricians "slowly disengaged themselves from mixing and conversing with the populace." ⁽⁵⁰⁾

In short, Barcelona's ruling class retained a certain degree [204] of involvement in communal festive life throughout the early modern period. Nevertheless, its growing estrangement from a substantial portion of these ceremonies and entertainments proved by far a more significant development. A new vision of elite identity dictated this withdrawal--one which deliberately eschewed the comic, material, and seeming "indecent" imagery and activities of popular festive life. ⁽⁵¹⁾ The following description of a marriage celebration, written around 1780 by the "enlightened" bureaucrat J. A. Navarro-Mas, illustrates the diffusion of the new, "serious" style of gravity and "good taste":

Late in the wedding night, three or four close relatives conduct the bride to her room. Once this is done the groom is informed, who without saying anything to the others who are dancing goes into her room and shuts the door. This is how it is done among serious and distinguished people (gente seria y principal). Among the lighthearted (alegre) and middling sorts, there is usually a great deal of levity when the groom is put to bed, with a host of persons shouting a thousand things to the bride. The former custom of taking a cup of broth to the couple at midnight, when all the young people entered the room to do and say a thousand foolish things, is rapidly disappearing. ⁽⁵²⁾

These pages on how changes in festive traditions overlay fundamental transformations in contemporary society have drawn largely upon printed accounts and other public documents. Yet more intimate sources like aristocratic journals also [205] reveal the thoroughness with which the elite absorbed and manipulated its schema of "cultural" differentiation between high and low. For example, the personal chronicle D. Joan de Sagarriga, Count of Creixell, wrote from 1767 to 1777 frequently depicted local social structures in the fluid idiom of civic fêtes. Creixell took painstaking care to distinguish the social background of the participants in different types of ceremonials. The fundamental division perceived by the author separated the nobility--also characterized as "patricians" or "persons of distinction"--and its ally, the local military establishment, from the pueblo, or "people." Not surprisingly, different holidays called forth different combinations of participants--hence the diligence with which Creixell noted that the annual royal birthday celebrations were strictly reserved to the "nobility and garrison," in contrast to more general parades like Corpus Christi, open to "all classes of persons." ⁽⁵³⁾

Similar concern with the way in which entertainments and rituals were rooted in distinct class backgrounds pervaded the lengthy Calaix de Sastre or "Grab-bag" of D. Rafael d'Amat, Baron of Maldá. ⁽⁵⁴⁾ This exhaustive diary--written from 1783 to 1816 in a lively if woefully corrupt Catalan--bore strong resemblance to Creixell's journal. However, the frequent eruption of the author's spiteful temper and its sheer weight of detail render it far more valuable evidence for the way in which contemporary aristocrats linked nobilitas to a style of life radically distinct from that of the masses. ⁽⁵⁵⁾ Maldá gave over his day-to-day schedule to [206] an endless round of tertúlies, salons, xocolotades, and other soirées with fellow aristocrats both within and in the immediate environs of the city (see Illustration 7). The diversions he so enthusiastically pursued were studiously unacademic in character, and serve to remind us of the way in which the separate cultura of the elite was at no point seen as exclusively erudite or even bookish. As with Creixell, a marked tendency toward social separation along cultural lines pervaded Maldá's thinking. The crucial determinant in his schema of classification was gusto, or "taste." The author--a passionate devotee of music and thus invariably in attendance at all local performances--employed the concept of taste to distinguish members of the elite from the lower classes present within the mixed sphere of public concerts. A "person of class"--an expression Maldá frequently used--differed from one "without class" through possession of buen gusto."Music," he wrote, "calms us, and makes us enjoy a placid sweetness . . . the upper crust (primers personatges), the greatest men in arms and letters, show good taste in this diversion; he who doesn't take pleasure in it is a rude mistanthrope. . . ." ⁽⁵⁶⁾ It is revealing that, like Creixell, the otherwise gregarious Maldá loathed places like the theatre, where one had to mix "with the popular crowd." Both authors showed a marked preference for the more private sphere of salons and intimate concerts over public saraus and Carnival balls, where all was "noise" and "confusion of persons." ⁽⁵⁷⁾ 

[207] 

As the trumpets of prudence sounded retreat, the symbolic and practical importance of the balcony took on new meaning. The balcony fulfilled the architectural requirements of the aristocracy's new attitude of distance from the street and other areas of promiscuous and uncontrolled contact with the "lower" classes. It provided a unique vantage-point from which the ruling class could observe and be observed. At the same time, it preserved the requisite of separation, and lent direct spatial configuration to the hierarchy of high and low. When poets like the Valencian notary Andreu Pineda exhorted contemporaries to avoid popular street celebrations by "watching jousts, bullfights, and tourneys from your terrace," many patricians took this advice quite seriously. ⁽⁵⁸⁾ Beginning in the late sixteenth century, one finds numerous references to local dignitaries and notables observing public events from balconies or window tribunes (see Illustration 8). A rather crass example can be found in the registers of the Bras Militar, which note a Barcelonan's decision to [210] add a balcony to his house immediately following his ennoblement as an honored citizen. ⁽⁵⁹⁾ 

In the climactic final pages of Don Quijote, the mad knight entered Barcelona on Midsummer's Day, always an occasion of high merriment and festive play. There he found hospitality in the palace of one D. Antonio Moreno, a "rich and intelligent gentleman." D. Antonio invited his celebrated guest to "show himself on a balcony giving onto one of the principal streets of the city, in sight of the populace." ⁽⁶⁰⁾ In so doing he repeated the challenge extended to all nobles--to exhibit themselves to their fellows and to the lower classes, while maintaining sufficient distance from the latter. There, on the balcony, lay the security nurtured by distinction, and the power born of vigilance. For Don Quijote these qualities were but illusions, laid bare without pity shortly thereafter. For the ruling class of Barcelona, however, the immediate future held no such dramatic reproach.

1. A. de Morales, "Discurso sobre la Lengua Castellana," in Pérez de Oliva, Diálogo, 73-74;Galateo, Chapter 20; Book of the Courtier, 47-57.

2. F. Eiximenis, cited in Carrére, Barcelona 1380-1462, II, i85n.; Pérez de Valdivia, Plática de Máscaras,  prologue; Moreno, Claridad de Simples, prologue; Manescal, Miscelánea de Tratados,"Al Lector."

3. Rocabertí, Presagios Fatales, "aprobación"; Romaguera, Atheneo de Grandesa, "aprobacions" and "Prólech al Lector."

4. Baucells, Font Mystica, "Lo Autor al Lector."

5. Sagarriga, Dietario, xxii.

6. For the vogue of emblem literature, see Klein, Form and Meaning, Chapter i. Bartoli made the revealing observation that "some Ancients, to conceal from the eyes of the vulgar the mysteries of their Theology, hid them (as treasure hidden within the Silenus) under . . . Fables . . . and learned Hieroglyphs" (The Learned Man, 186).  For the deliberate pursuit of esoteric knowledge by early modern elites, see Lowinsky, Secret Chromatic Art,  Chapter 9.

7. Valencia, Ilustración, 7 and 21; Pujol, Obra Poética, 15. Gracián's El Discreto (Huesca, 1646) discussed  the ways in which one obtained (and subtly displayed) the quality of discretion.

8. Festiva Sagrada, 9-10. See also Wind, Pagan Mysteries.

9. Soler, Río del Parayso, first sermon; Dr. Pere Roig i Morell's preface to Baucells, Font Mystica.

10. Bataillon, Erasmo y España, II, 145-151.

11. Book of the Courtier, 43 and 47; Gracián Dantisco, Galateo Español, 164-165.

12. Covarrubias, Tesoro, 386; Quevedo citations in Corominas, Diccionario Crítico Etimológico,I, 980. The normally staid Calderón satirized culto speech in plays like No Hay Burlas Con el Amor.

13. The passages are from Bartoli, Learned Man; see also Sans, Sabio Ignorante, I, 10, 52, 62, and 76.

14. Capmany, Filosofía de la Bloquearía, 41.

15. Cited in Anes, Economía e Ilustración, 202-203.

16. Bartoli, The Learned Man, 343-344. See Raimondi, "Daniello Bartoli e la 'Ricreazione del Savio,' " in his  Letteratura Barocca, 249-326; and Asor Rosa and Angelini, Daniello Bartoli.

17. Sans, Sabio Ignorante, I, 10, 46, and 62.

18. Elliott, Revolt, 321; García Cárcel and Nicolau, "Castella contra Catalunya," 44; Pujades, Dietari, III, 47-48.  For a recent survey of the "language question" in early modern Catalonia, see Modest Prats' prologue to Rossich,  Poética del Barroc, vii-xliv.

19. Pujades, Dietari, I, 17; Peralta, Memorial, dedication. For Bosch, see his Titols, 28; and Pons, Littérature Catalane, 3-74. For an example of the attack on Catalan as "naturally curt and little polished," see Ros, Cataluña Desengañada, 239-243.

20. Aguiló, Catálogo; Andreu, Catálogo; Catálogo de la Colección de Folletos Bonsoms, I.

21. A.H.M.B./Ms. A-339.

22. B.N./Ms. 2338, 54r. See also Elliott, "Provincial Aristocracy," 128.

23. For an interesting remark on the imitation of court dress in early seventeenth-century Barcelona, see Pujades,  Dietari, III, 135. For similar developments in France, see Elias, Court Society.

24. Maltby, Alba, 8 and 12; Fernández de Heredia, Obras, xxvii.

25. A.R.S.I./Hisp. 139, Epist. Hispan, 184r.-v. (26 March 1596). Moreover, the academic exercises staged for  Philip II in 1585 included performances in all three local languages--Latin, Spanish, and Catalan: A.R.S.I./Arag.  25-I, Litterae Annuae, 13V.

26. Gil, Memorial.

27. A.R.S.I./Arag. 27-I, Misiones, 83r. (11 March 1694).

28. Constituciones de Cordelles, 30. According to this document, misplaced accents posed the greatest problem.

29. Advertiments de la Pest, prologue

30. A.H.M.B./Ms. B-98, 23 June 1700. Significantly, the only work that the Academicians published in Catalan was  their edition of the Rabelaisian poetry of Vicens Garcia, the "Rector of Vallfogona."

31. Romaguera, Atheneo de Grandesa, "Prólech al Lector." It is worth noting that the only Catalan quoted in the  Count of Creixell's diary (1767-1777) was spoken by apprentices and thieves (Sagarriga, Dietario, 102).

32. Burke, "Languages." See also Brunot, Histoire de la Langue Francaise, II, 27-32; III (I), 180-183, III (2),  719-721; and V (I).

33. See, for example, the short farce "La Vesita" in Fernández de Heredia, Obras, 137-160. For the linguistic  evolution of Valencia, see: Fuster, Heretgies, Revoltes i Sermons, 161-230, and his Poetas, Moriscos y  Curas, 89-103; and García Cárcel, Herejía y Sociedad, 312-320, and his Germanías de Valencia, 213-218.

34. Milán, Cortesano, 68.

35. For more extensive discussion of Barcelona's ceremonial life, see my "Public Ceremonies and Private Fêtes."   For suggestive treatments of elite ceremonial in other European cities, see: Phythian-Adams, "Ceremony and  the Citizen"; Ber-geron, English Civic Pageantry; Burke, Popular Culture;Trexler, Public Life; Muir, Civic Ritual; and Buratti, Città Rituales.

36. Amades, Carnestoltes; Duran, Fiesta del Corpus; Llompart, "F'iesta del Corpus Christi"; Almerich,  Tradiciones; Bofarull, "Festejos y Ceremonias."

37. A.C.A./Generalitat G-68, Dictan del Bras Militar, under those dates. Josep Montfar noted in his Diario that  both admission and chair rental fees were charged at the Born jousts (see under 23 April 1686).

38. A.C.A./Gen. G-75.

39. A.H.M.B./Ms. B-44, 89V. For a similar emphasis on the theatrical element in early modern elite culture, see  Thompson, "Patrician Society," and his "Eighteenth-Century English Society."

40. Curet, Historia del Teatre Català, 71-92; Subirá, Opera en los Teatros de Barcelona, 11-54; Alier,  L'Opera, 11-60; Capmany, Memorias Históricas, II, 996. While we cannot determine exactly who went to these  balls, it seems unlikely that the admission fee excluded any save the poorest of local inhabitants.

41. Pérez de Valdivia, Plática de Máscaras, 431".; Platter, Journal, 225; Pujades, Dietari, I, 344; Parets,  "Sucesos," vols. 20, 54-96 and 24, 226-245; Dança Momería; and Dietari, XIV, 557-569.

42. F. Tagell, Obras de la Mussa Catalana Dessocupada, B.U.B./Ms. 5, 14r. and 73v.

43. Duran, "L'Estament Militar," 250-252; Relación Verdadera de las Fiestas de Carnestoliendas.A typical enclosure  of this type is depicted in Illustration 8.

44. Sagarriga, Dietario, 108; Galí, Maldà, 238-242; Curet, Teatres Particulars.

45. Mas Givanel, Mascarada Quixotesca. For a similar manipulation of the Roman Carnival of 1639, see  Boiteux, "Carnaval Annexé." For a study of a peculiarly violent contrast between aristocratic and popular festivities,  see Le Roy Ladurie, Carnival in Romans.

46. In 1766, riots against the high price of grain broke out in many Spanish cities. See: Vilar, "Motín de  Esquilache"; Rodríguez, "Spanish Riots of 1766," and her "Riots of 1766"; and Mercader,Capitans Generals, 108-109.

47. Davis, "The Reasons of Misrule," in her Society and Culture, chap. 4; Ginzburg, Cheese and the Worms, 125-126; Burke, Popular Culture, Chapter 8. The actual success the elite enjoyed in its attempt to suppress   popular culture is open to doubt; for some judicious remarks on this point, see Beik, "Popular Culture and  Elite Repression."

48. Sagarriga, Dietario, 241.

49. A.H.N./Consejos Suprimidos, leg. 7106, untitled report on Barcelona confraternities (1771);A.S.V./Relat.  Dioc., 308v.-309r. (1729); Xaupí, Recherches, 505

50. Giovan Battista Spinola, cited in Savelli, Repubblica Oligarchica, 47. See also Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood, chap, 5; Grendi, "Compagnie del SS. Sacramento," and his "Confraternite Liguri"; and Agulhon, Pénitents  et Francs-Macons, III.

51. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World; Thomas, "Place of Laughter"; Elias, History of Manners.

52. Published in Zamora, Diario de los Viajes, 470. See also Stone, Family, Sex, and Marriage, 223-224.

53. Sagarriga, Dietario, 17, 94, and 271.

54. The 53 volumes of this diary are found in A.H.M.B./Mss. A-201 to 254. I take most of the references cited here  from Alexandre Galí's indispensable anthology with commentary, Maldá.

55. It is revealing that such strong emphasis on a separate style of life is found in an aristocrat who often shared fairly  close proximity to the "lower" classes. Maldá frequently cited artisan acquaintances in his diary (Galí, Maldá, 73);  the old goat even found "peasant and artisan girls"(pagesetes y menestrales) more attractive than noblewomen (ibid., 109). In many respects he exemplifies the "paternalist" tradition so important a part of the eighteenth-century social equation delineated by E. P. Thompson

56. Alier, "Vida Musical," 52.

57. Galí, Maldá, 98-102 and 205.

58. Escriu Andreu Martí Pineda.

59. Pujades, Dietari, III, 218; Montfar, Diario, 7 April 1686; A.C.A./Gen. G-69, Dietari del Bras Militar, III, 18 Jan. 1683.

60. Don Quijote, II, 62.