After about fifteen months of investigation into my doctoral thesis I was forced, by the publication of an ample work based on my own reseach topic, to uncover new areas of investigation. I was looking into the idea of researching Diego de Arce y Reinoso, Inquisitor General, and looking for documents relating to him in the catalogue of the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. Finding a reference to him in the listing for BN MSS 2.276 I requested the item and thus “discovered” the correspondence presented here. The manuscript title is Correspondencia del Ilustrísimo obispo de Sigüenza, don fray Pedro de Tapia, con don Francisco de Oviedo, secretario del Rey. I hope that by making the correspondence available in this format it will become freely available to a much wider audience. It is a work which I feel complements in its depth of detail, if not its extension, the Avisos de Barrionuevo so well known by all historians of the reign of Philip IV.

The correspondence comprises of a total of one hundred and seventy-nine letters and a copy of a memorial which friar Pedro sent to the Philip IV in 1646. Most of the letters originated in Madrid by Francisco de Oviedo, who wrote on the left-hand side of the paper. Friar Pedro wrote his reply on the right-hand side of the paper, answering most of Oviedo's points. Most of the letters occupied two sheets of paper. One hundred and fifty-three of the letters originated with Oviedo in Madrid, all of which, except twenty-three, are signed and dated by him, and it is this date which I have given at the start of each letter. Of the twenty-three letters which are not signed by Oviedo, twenty-two are dated by friar Pedro in his reply. In these instances this is the date given at the beginning of the letter and it is marked with a T to identify it. The reason these letters were not signed by Oviedo was that friar Pedro’s reply did not reach the third sheet of paper used and it had, therefore, not been returned to Madrid. The letters were written to catch the Aragonese estafetas which left Madrid on Saturdays and Wednesdays. There are thus two letters per week between December 1645 and December 1647. The only breaks in this pattern were occasioned by friar Pedro’s visitations of his diocese between April and August 1646 and May to July of 1647, and during friar Pedro’s illness towards the end of 1646. Unless otherwise indicated Oviedo was in Madrid and friar Pedro in Sigüenza. The numbers provided at the beginning of each letter I have added myself as a reference.

I have tried, as much as possible, to leave the original orthography and punctuation in order to retain the work’s authentic style. I have supplied notes to various words which I feel to be technical terms, old expressions, figurative language or those which may otherwise have initially confused me while reading the manuscript. The extent of these notations, however, is not exhaustive: I do not claim to be an expert on etimology. As an easy reference I have created hyperlinks on the names mentioned in the correspondence which link to biographical information (where available). It is also possible to find information with the biographical information of other instances in the correspondence when those people were mentioned. Where someone is mentioned more than once in a letter I have usually only linked the first mention.

There are a number of themes or topics which run throughout the letters which occur with considerable frequency. One of the most frequent of these is that relating to the financial administration of the diocese of Sigüenza and Segovia (occupied by friar Pedro until 1645). This latter administration is wound up in 1647. Another theme, directly relating to friar Pedro’s duties as bishop is his description of his work during his extensive visitations to his diocese. These occured between April and July 1646, taking friar Pedro at least 158km and to over fourteen towns and from May to July 1647 with a distance of 100km and visits to over eight towns. (See Appendix) A further insight can be gained into what was involved in being a seventeenth-century bishop by looking at the consultative theological work friar Pedro carried out - we can see details of his correspondence, his attendence at meetings, his advice on moral matters and his work on his publications.

There are a couple of important themes in the correspondence which I have used to produce articles, on the reputation question in: “Los usos políticos de la reputación en la Corte de Felipe IV” and on the patronage system in: “Un hábito para Luis: el funcionamiento del sistema de patronazgo en la Corte de Felipe IV” 1. Both of these articles address how important it was in the seventeenth century to consider the public aspect of all private events, an issue most evident throughout this correspondence. Nowadays we do not really have this distinction between the public and the private, we consider sin or virtue to be equally good or bad whether well-known or anonymous. In the seventeenth-century Catholic Monarchy the public knowledge of any sin created a scandal which incites “con su enfermedad contagiosa a los otros súbditos.” 2 Spreading private sin out into the body politic was unacceptable and it was always considered better to hide the sin away and for it to be unpunished than to punish it and thereby run the risk of public imitation of the sin. I consider this to be one of the fundamental reasons behind the insistence on secrecy in the Inquisition: not to stop people seeing in but to stop sin from spreading out. Likewise virtue needed to be extolled and the public knowledge of virtue was what was termed reputación. The complexities of acquiring, maintaining and using a reputación to enhance one’s political advantage can be seen clearly in the correspondence.

What I examined extensively in my doctoral thesis were the aspects revealed in the correspondence directly relating to the inner workings of a complex faction and the modus operandi of Luis de Haro. Much of the information relating to the workings of the faction is found in the discussions of the affairs of the Duke of Medinaceli, with whom both writers correspond. Many of the complexities of sailing a ducal house through the turbid waters of seventeenth-century politics are revealed here. It is also made self-evident the extent to which the age and personality of the incumbent influenced the success of his (or sometimes her) household. The liability or asset one’s relatives could become is also apparent as is the influence wielded by wives, mothers and daughters. The influence of Catalina Fernández de Córdoba is much more apparent in the marriage negotiations maintained for her children than is that of her politically ambitious husband Luis de Haro.

The correspondence will allow us to appreciate and come to understand opinions which may differ widely from our own and grasp the complex nature of the context in which they were held.

Vanessa Johnson, PhD